


Finding Home

by FrostedGear



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avenger Loki (Marvel), Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, FrostIron - Freeform, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Laufey's Good Parenting (Marvel), Loki Gets a Hug (Marvel), Loki accepts his heritage, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Tony Stark Feels, Tony's Bots - Freeform, canon speedrun, loki has friends, phil coulson is not dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 19:14:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28693764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostedGear/pseuds/FrostedGear
Summary: Loki knew he was different. After piecing it together he leaves Asgard and his adoptive family behind.Four hundred years later he leaves Jotunheim and finds himself an Agent of SHIELD.All in all, Loki's life was going fairly smoothly until SHIELD lost the Tesseract to an unknown alien and Phil barged into Stark Tower on date night.
Relationships: Loki/Tony Stark
Comments: 108
Kudos: 448





	1. The Blue

Alone in the Queen’s garden, a young boy sat on the ground, eyes on his hand as snowflakes fell on his skin. It had been snowing in Asgard for a few hours now, the white flecks had settled covering the boy’s dark hair and shoulders in small hills of snow and the amount on the floor reached the boys knees. But it wasn’t the snow that the boy was interested in. It was how the tips of his fingers turned blue. Not the bright red of someone who was cold, or the bruised blue-purple of frostbite, but solid night blue. It didn’t hurt as the boy squeezed and flexed his fingers, nor was the boy cold.

“Loki!”

Pausing in his investigation, the boy wheeled around, scanning the garden and soon finding a blonde boy swathed in a thick red cloak lined with white fur running towards him. “Thor,” he greeted, standing up, clasping his hands behind his back to hide his fingers.

“Loki, what are you doing out here? It’s freezing!” Thor asked, visibly shivering despite his furs and breath leaving his mouth in a plume of white mist.

“Just… watching the snow,” Loki shrugged, noting how his own breath wasn’t warm enough to create mist in the air.

Thor’s face scrunched in as he looked at Loki. After a moment, he waved Loki closer, “Well… you can watch it inside right? Come on, you’ll catch a horrible cold, brother.” Thor kept his arm out, waiting for Loki to sidle up before wrapping his cloak around both of them and directing them inside. “You’re freezing.”

“It’s not that cold,” Loki mumbled back, pouting a little as Thor rubbed his arm up and down.

“It’s bloody freezing and you’re so cold I wouldn’t be surprised if you turned blue!”

Loki stopped dead, Thor taking a step further and stumbling before also pausing and turning with confusion obvious in his face. “You wouldn’t be surprised if I turned blue?”

“Well… it’s just an expression,” Thor frowned. “If you did suddenly turn blue, I’d be very worried. You know that’s not healthy right?”

“Of course!” Loki snapped, cheeks flushing.

“Then why mention it?”

“J-just forget it,” Loki muttered, pulling Thor back towards the castle.

In his room later that evening, Loki laid on his bed, tossing a paperweight into the air and catching it while his thoughts wandered. The blue had gone from his fingers now, but the memory lingered. This wasn’t the first time Loki had noticed it but he had yet to do anything about it or mention the odd feature to his family. Instead, he’d waited and watched and slowly accumulated information and theories. Thor was always colder than him in winter, shivering without a cloak while Loki felt sure that if he wanted to he could stand outside in his undergarments and barely feel a chill.

He knew Frigga had noticed his changing fingers. Back when he was very small, he would cling to her and struggle to socialise with Thor and his friends, so Frigga would allow him to help her garden. While helping prepare her gardens for the spring, Frigga had told Loki he was getting cold and conjured some gloves, pulling them over Loki’s fingers before the blue got any further than the very tips of his fingers, while her own fingers remained ungloved and more importantly, slightly red from the cold. Not blue.

Each winter though, Loki did little more than occasionally watch as his fingers or sometimes his toes shift colour. So far, he knew it was abnormal from what he’d observed of others around him. He knew it didn’t hurt, and that it only occurred in cold weather, never in hot, windy or any other weather type. He knew he was abnormal in other ways, being blessed with strong magic he was discouraged from using (Odin being particularly insistent about that subject, despite supposedly being quite the magician himself) though that had simply led Loki to teach himself from old tomes in Asgard’s library once Odin had caught Frigga showing Loki spells one too many times.

As he had with learning more complex spells, Loki took learning about the blue slowly and methodically, which was why it had taken him the better part of two decades before he finally decided to try turning a whole limb blue. Ice spells were surprisingly hard to find information on, and so Loki had been forced to wait for the seasons to change and for the weather to get bad enough for the blue to start appearing.

Waiting until the hour was late and that only the night watch would be up, Loki rose from his bed, weaving magic with wisps of green energy around his hands. He cast two spells, one to hide himself from Heimdall, the other to place an illusion of himself in the bed. Decoy set, Loki took to his balcony barefoot and pressed his feet into the layer of snow there on the stone, waiting.

He stood there an hour, occupying himself with mapping the constellations in the sky above before looking at his feet. Cold, but not yet blue. Sighing, Loki looked out into the courtyard under his window. There was a fountain in the centre that he knew would have lightly frozen over by now, though he could probably crack it and dunk his foot to cool it faster. It was just a matter of not getting caught on his way down there. Grabbing a pair of boots to hide his feet on the chance he was found, Loki left his rooms and snuck along the servant routes, his bare feet padding quietly on the stone.

He didn’t pass a soul on his way to the fountain though Loki’s heart beat in his ears all while he rolled up his pant leg and dunked his right foot into the frigid water, switching between letting it get colder in the air and dunking it again. It felt like hours before something eventually happened and when it finally did, Loki couldn’t look away.

The blue enveloped his toes, turning the nails black and slowly as it reached the top of his foot, Loki saw lines on his skin. Touching them, he found the lines were raised, like some of the particularly bad scars warriors had, but Loki could remember no injury to his foot, nor did the lines look like a wound. They looked intentional, like the stripes on a fish. Three lines coming from his ankle, suggesting that they perhaps would go up his leg should that become blue too, creating two channels that spiralled on the top of his foot. Loki found them pretty, but the more he touched them, the warmer his skin got, hiding the blue.

The sound of armoured feet hitting stone pricked his ears, Loki’s head snapping up and locating two Einherjar beginning their patrol in the courtyard. Moving swiftly, Loki darted from the fountain and hurried back to his room.

* * *

The next morning, Loki was forced to wait through lectures on Asgardian laws and battle practise before he could slip away to the library while Thor and the other warriors went for lunch. His absence wasn’t unusual, though it wasn’t exactly tolerated, a small part of Loki wondering who would come find and scold him out of his parents and brother as he scanned shelves in the library for a book on magical maladies or traits.

Nothing was immediately obvious, which irritated Loki as he scanned books for any possible explanation. His ire spiked when Thor was the one to chase him down, forcibly gaining Loki’s attention by smacking his head with a book.

“Ow! Thor!” Loki span around to glare at his brother. Thor pouted back, arms crossed over his chest, unimpressed.

“Where were you at lunch?” he demanded, “Father is furious.”

“He can stay furious,” Loki dismissed with a shrug, looking back to his book. This one held no explanations either.

Deflating, Thor took a breath and took Loki in a moment, knowing shouting and demanding rarely got anything out of the second son of Odin. “So what are you doing anyway?”

“Working on a project.”

“Magic again?”

Loki looked up darkly at the distain in Thor’s tone. “You say that like my ability to do magic hasn’t saved us on countless adventures.”

“Well, it’s also gotten us into trouble,” Thor pointed out, though there was no heat to the words. Loki smiled, recognising the tease for what it was.

“I told Sif I was sorry about the hair.”

Thor chuckled, “Truth be told, I like it better dark. She looked too maidenly blonde.”

“You should tell her that,” Loki said flicking his gaze back to the page, “She likes you, you know.”

“Everyone likes me,” Thor sighed as if being popular was some horrendous issue.

Rolling his eyes, Loki closed his book and slid it back where it belonged on the shelf. “Have I missed any other classes?” he asked, shifting the conversation away from Thor’s-not problem of popularity while anyone and everyone avoided giving Loki the time of day for one reason or another; be it his magic, his tendency to lie, the way he paid ‘too much attention’ as though it was a bad thing or realised when someone was being dishonest and called it out rather than keeping it to himself.

“Hm? Oh well, we should have been in Strategy with Lord Ejaryin. But I think we’ll live.”

“Ejaryin is dull anyway,” Loki shrugged.

Thor groaned, nodding, “So, so dull. How does he make battle sound more boring than our law lessons?”

Loki chuckled. “It’s impressive. Though you’re obviously paying _some_ attention. You show good tactics in practise.”

Thor smiled, reaching out to thump Loki gently in the arm. “Thank you. Come though, I think it would be best if we went back to class. As I said, Father is already mad. I would rather avoid any further ire.”

Though he would rather stay and finish his search, Loki couldn’t deny Thor was right. Nodding, Loki walked beside Thor as they left the library and went to their private tutor, earning a scolding, but nothing Loki wasn’t used to.

* * *

When Odin questioned what Loki had been doing that day at dinner, Loki was careful to remain vague, not wishing to jump to his own conclusions without enough information and not wanting to alert Odin to what he was looking into as it seemed to Loki (at least from the continued insistence from Frigga that he should wear gloves in winter) something was being hidden from him.

He was forbidden to enter the library for a month (not that it would stop Loki from his research) and he had to pen a letter of apology to his tutor for actively skipping his lessons. Annoyances more than anything else, particularly as over the next fortnight Loki still had no answers and the snow was clearing up to be replaced by rain. Which would mean no more studying his strange blue-ness.

Once he was allowed back into the library, Loki took an entire shelf’s worth of books to his room, reading through them to try figure out what the blue was. He was leafing through a guide to known diseases of the Nine Realms as thunder rolled angrily, drawing Loki’s attention to the window and noticing the late hour. He waited several moments, listening to the next two claps of thunder. It seemed a storm was heading their way. Shrugging, Loki rose to change for bed and slipped under his covers, waving a hand to darken the lights in his room with magic.

Loki slept best in bad weather. Storms, be they rain, lighting or snow bothered him very little, while they terrified Thor, thunder storms being the worst. So much so Thor had a habit that he still hadn’t quite grown out of where he once he was too old to be permitted in their parents’ bed, he had snuck into Loki’s rooms instead, waking Loki as he slipped into the bed beside him and insisted he was there to protect Loki from the thunder. Tonight was no different. Barely an hour later, once the storm was fully upon them, Loki’s door opened and Thor entered with a small “Loki?”

“I’m up,” Loki mumbled from the bed, shuffling over to make room for Thor. “What brings the God of Thunder?” he teased softly as Thor joined him.

“I’m here to protect you from the thunder.” Loki might have believed Thor had his brother’s voice not shook slightly at the next rumble of thunder and the fact that Loki wasn’t in the least scared. He reached over and put an arm around Thor, snuggling closer.

“Then perhaps my big brother should tell a story to distract me from the thunder?” he suggested as lightning flashed in the sky. Thor’s hand bunched into the back of his shirt.

“Ah, uhm. Yeah. How about one of Father’s war stories?” Loki hummed, not much caring, but knowing Thor remembered those quite well. The storm continued to rage through the night while Thor slowly found his footing at the start of Odin’s battle with the Frost Giant Laufey. “Odin and Laufey battled for hours in Jotunheim, and while Laufey managed to take one of his eyes out with his black claws-”

“I thought Father lost his eye in a trade with the Norns for knowledge?” Loki piped up.

Thor huffed, a beat of silence hanging between them as Thor thought about that. “Maybe? I think he does change that detail depending on who the story is being told to. But I think it’s true that Laufey took it, because Frost Giants have sharp claws and loads of Einherjar have scars from them.”

“Black claws? Like… their nails are black?” Loki asked slowly, his mind whirring.

“Uhm. Maybe?” Thor’s hand rubbed circles on Loki’s back, causing Loki to realise he’d tensed up. Was he scared? He thought back to his foot with its blue skin and black nails. The possibility that the secret he was hiding was that he was a Frost Giant. A monster. Thor however was oblivious to Loki’s worry as he continued, “I heard all of them have red eyes. And they don’t feel the cold of their realm. Kiern said they fought in loincloths!”

Loki took a deep breath through his nose. Was he an idiot or something? Why had the possibility of him being another race, another species never popped up? He had assumed the blue was some kind of defect but what if _that_ was his reality and his pale As skin was a shell? An illusion?

That’s why Odin didn’t like him learning magic. The thought struck him like a thunderbolt, eyes blowing wide.

“Loki, are you okay?” Thor squeezed his arm. “You’re trembling.”

Shake him off, don’t let Thor work it out, Loki’s mind screamed, his mouth throwing the first lie out he thought of. “Just thinking about fighting a bunch of people in loincloths. Maybe they did that to distract the Einherjar?”

Thor laughed, “Their cold-shrivelled dicks would be a distraction I’m sure. Not the kind of up-shirt action I’m interested in.”

Loki snorted and thumped Thor good-naturedly. “If you’re going to start thinking of girls, you can go back to your own room.”

“Nope.” Thunder and lightning struck outside to emphasise Thor’s head shaking. “No, nope!”

Smiling gently, Loki shelved his worries for the moment. He wasn’t going to be able to prove or disprove the possibility he was really a Frost Giant this night, with Thor shivering and clinging to him. He wasn’t sure what to do with the information either if he did get it. Should he speak with Odin or Frigga? Should he involve Thor in his search? These were problems for tomorrow’s Loki. Tonight, he’d cling to his life as it was, and coax Thor to sleep between the claps of thunder with soft words and subtle wisps of magic.

* * *

Over the weeks, Loki played along with his established timetable, going to his classes on time and performing as well as usual. He was quiet at mealtimes, but didn’t skip them as he had before. In the evenings however, Loki immersed himself in the library, searching up Jotun and coming up surprisingly short.

The only sources to be found were few and far between, all from Asgardian authors. Thor had been right about the black claws and the few drawings of Jotun he found showed lined markings covering the Frost Giants’ bodies. Even those of children. The sources cited that the lines were carved into the skin but Loki couldn’t find a uniform reasoning or even a passing comment from a Frost Giant, casting into doubt the sources even before Loki thought about his own marks. Yes, they were perhaps too precise for them to be natural, but the only time that Loki could have been scarred was as a baby. There was no way a baby would have stayed still as lines were carved into his skin deep enough to cause such raised welts. If they were all over his body as the drawings suggested, the blood loss and trauma would kill a baby. He had to have been born with them. Which then begged the question; just how much of what Asgard ‘knew’ about Jotunheim and her people was a lie?

“You’re scheming.”

Loki looked up from his book to find Thor looking at him just as accusingly as his tone had been. “I’m not.”

“Yes you are. You’ve been quiet and good for almost a month now. You’re scheming,” Thor insisted, “So, what about?”

Loki rolled his eyes. “I’m not scheming,” he said. “Really.”

“Then why are you spending hours in a dark corner of the library?”

“I am generally in the library most evenings,” Loki pointed out.

“Yes, but in the magic section. You aren’t in this area much,” said Thor glancing around. “I wouldn’t have noticed if I didn’t know this area usually has a light here.” Loki followed Thor’s finger to an orb of light Loki had deactivated to hide himself. There were more than a few areas of the Grand Library with bad lighting, so Loki had assumed no one would notice.

“Ah, I didn’t realise you had an interest in journals.” Loki’s gaze lingered on the damaged orb a moment longer before sliding the book he was reading back onto the shelf.

Thor shrugged, leaning against the shelf. “So what _are_ you doing then?”

“Reading.”

“ _Loki_.”

Loki winced at the way Thor growled his name, eerily similar to Odin in both sound and short temper. He needed enough of an answer to placate Thor and settled on, “I’m… trying to work something out.”

“Work out what?”

He took a moment to reply, pinching at the skin on his wrist anxiously. “So… you know how before either of us were born, the nine realms were in chaos?”

“And Father brought peace,” Thor nodded.

Loki winced. “You see, I’m not so convinced he did. There’s chunks of information missing and none of the journals here are from anyone not from Asgard,” he explained, gesturing for Thor to follow him further down the isle. Thor was glaring, arms crossed but followed Loki to an illustration of the Nine Realms. “Asgard has monopoly on travel, specifically travel provided by Bifrost,” Loki began, pointing at the golden realm. “We currently have treaties with Vanaheim, Nidavellir and Alfheim that allow for free travel between the realms and peace treaties with Jotunheim and Midgard but no travel for those native to the realm, although As can go there. While travel to Muspelheim and Niflheim is forbidden as is their ability to come to Asgard and the Svartalf were wiped out during war with Grandfather Bor, so while there’s no treaty in place, that realm has no travel permissions either. It’s a lot for just Father and Grandfather to manage in Father’s youth. I don’t even think the dates line up.”

“So what’s your point?” Thor asked, pouting. “We’ve known in history classes that armies are rarely recognised as individuals. It’s the commanders, like Father and Grandfather that are remembered. The treaties we have with Midgard protect the young realm from races that would abuse them, like the Frost Giants of Jotunheim, who assaulted the realm not long before you were born. They can’t be trusted with free travel. That’s also why everyone has to come via Asgard before going on their way, such as travelling from Midgard to Alfheim to deliver flowers.”

Loki narrowed his eyebrows at that. “When did the war with Jotunheim cease?”

“Uhm, about a year before you were born, so six hundred and forty-ish years ago. Why?”

“And you were about fifty?”

“Fifty-six. I’m fifty-seven years older than you, remember?” Loki nodded. Thor smirked and nudged Loki, “War-baby.”

Loki scoffed and elbowed him. “Accident. At least you were planned.” Asgardian siblings were rarely so close in age as Loki and Thor. Generally there was at least a hundred years between pregnancies if not two and while the war had been implied to play a part in Loki and Thor’s age gap, Loki now held much more doubt about his origins. “Hey, Thor?”

“Hmm?”

“Did Asgard take any prisoners when they were bringing peace to the realms?”

Thor quirked an eyebrow. “I’d assume so, but I was barely more than a baby myself. And neither of us are allowed in the dungeons,” he added. “I know they executed some of the opposition leaders, like Malekith. And I don’t actually think there’s been any prisoners recently.”

Loki nodded. It was beginning to seem like he would have to look beyond Asgard for his answers. And he couldn’t have Thor follow him. His plans would be delicate and slow, neither of which were Thor’s strengths. “Do you want to spar?”

Thor startled, then grinned. “Yes!”

* * *

It took ten years of arduous planning, studying, practising but finally, Loki felt he knew as much about himself as Asgard was willing to give him without daring to ask Odin or Frigga themselves. He wanted to know what other realms had to say. What _Jotunheim_ had to say.

So he had searched and learned of a secret way to travel the realms. There were small tears, hidden gateways where one could travel the corridors between worlds and after looking and wandering while hidden from Heimdall, Loki had found the paths to pretty much every realm from Asgard, though he had not lingered. One day, he thought, he might come back and explore the realms, but this day he wished to travel to Jotunheim.

He wasn’t sure how long he would be gone or what to expect from the Jotnar, but Loki needed to see what the people Asgard considered barbarians were really like. He packed a bag with rations and removed his finery, leaving him in black leathers and his dark green undershirt. He’d be warm enough on Jotunheim, or so Loki believed. And if he needed to change to his natural skin, well, perhaps all the better.

The pathway to Jotunheim was, somewhat hilariously, in a pokey corner of the Asgard treasury. The only trick to it was having enough momentum and jumping through between Einherjar guard shifts. A rather simple ask when Loki had snuck into the treasury on more than one occasion to stare at the Casket of Ancient Winters and Asgard’s other trophies.

Jotunheim itself was incredibly dark compared to Asgard, snow crunching below Loki’s boots as he walked. A realm of perpetual winter, the landscape was a mix of blues, blacks and greys, dark trees sprouting occasionally, breaking up the jutting stones and cliffs Loki could see around him. All was blanketed in heavy snow and there was no clear sign of intelligent life that he could make out. Still with a small exhale, and the puff of white smoke it caused, Loki checked his pack was secure and headed off in the direction he believed the Jotun capital of Utgard lay.

After an hour, Loki was aware there were eyes on him. Someone or something was tracking him, but made no move to come closer and Loki replied by not pausing or looking for the source. Either they knew Loki was aware of them and were choosing to wait for him to let his guard down or they meant no harm. In either case, they weren’t a problem for the moment.

He could feel the cold in Jotunheim, which was a little disconcerting and the hour of walking and occasionally slipping in the snow had him breathing heavily, but it had nothing on the fluttering in his stomach as Loki began to pick out caves in the stones and small homes made of dark ice. He had found civilisation it seemed. On the dark horizon, Loki could see a large structure, what he hoped was Utgard. He paused to take a couple of deep breaths and calm himself. He was far from Asgard and no one knew he was here. This morning Loki had thought himself very clever, now he wondered if he was in fact very stupid.

Either the people in the houses were sleeping or not home, for Loki passed through the area with no contact with any Jotun. Everything was eerily silent, as though if Loki dared to speak or moved too loudly, he would shatter the stillness of the land and be consumed by something. He was also painfully under the impression that he was being lead. A sensation that only grew when he reached the dark walls of Utgard.

Utgard looked like a keep of sorts more than the castle he was used to in Asgard. It was smaller than the one in Asgard too, which Loki felt strange for Frost Giants. It was only when he closed in on the entrance and saw the two _huge_ Jotun flanking an archway blocked with shards of ice that Loki realised he hadn’t really thought this through.

He might be a Jotun – but he wasn’t _raised_ Jotun. He had no idea about hierarchy, if there was one, or even who would care about him or what he wanted to know. But he had seen the guards, and could see they had spotted him in turn. “Time to go be stupid I guess,” Loki muttered to himself.

“I told you I saw an As, Binr,” one guard noted to the other once Loki was only ten or so feet away.

Binr sighed, “I guess I owe you that drink now, Rahel.” While Rahel laughed, Loki took in both giants. Even from this distance, Loki could tell they towered above him, easily at least fifteen feet tall, with Rahel being the taller of the two by half a head. They wore no metal armour, instead their protection was formed of ice, carefully shaped to protect their thighs under long fur kilts. On each Jotun’s left arm a thin band of Uru looped around their bicep, marked with an emblem Loki couldn’t make out. In fact, beyond the Uru and kilt, the Jotun were naked as far as Loki could see. They didn’t even have shoes. Though, he did note that Thor’s story was wrong in the claw department. Both Rahel and Binr had short black nails on very normal looking fingers and toes, the lines on their skin raised as Loki remembered his own, covering their bodies in a different pattern than Loki’s or even each other though there were similarities, such as both Rahel and Binr’s patterns being make up of only two sets of lines compared to Loki’s three.

“So, to what do we owe the pleasure?” Rahel asked of Loki and while Loki could head a mix of derision and mocking in Rahel’s tone, he wasn’t immediately struck by the notion these men were barbaric just because they weren’t clothed from head to toe as he was.

“I believe Asgard may have misplaced something in its kingdom,” began Loki, licking his lips, suddenly aware they were very dry. “I was hoping I might be able to meet with someone?”

Binr laughed, “Yes, it’s called the Casket of Ancient Winters. Although I’m sure if Odin had any intention of giving it back there would be an entourage of Einherjar with you. Go home, Little Mouse.”

Behind Loki came the sound of something heavy landing in the snow. Binr and Rahel didn’t react as though it were any more of a threat than Loki, but Loki span on his heel all the same. While Rahel and Binr were bald, this new Jotun that had joined them had long dark hair, the tendrils looping on the ground then rising to curl around the Jotun’s hips as they came up from their crouch. “Ah, you were the one following me,” said Loki.

“You’re far from home, Little Mouse,” the Jotun replied, a female Loki thought, from how a second band of fur covered her breasts. This one wore more finery than the guards, small beads of Uru sparkling in the woman’s hair and on her fingers as she walked forward.

“I’m not that much smaller than you,” Loki pointed out with a frown. There was perhaps a foot or two at most between them.

Laughing the woman replied, “Size is not everything, even amongst giants. Isn’t that right, Binr, Rahel?”

“Indeed, Lady Angrboda,” said Binr. Both men bowed their heads.

Rahel spoke up, “Lady Angrboda, we did not see Bifrost. How is it that an As is here?”

“I do not know, I was hoping to discover the same myself. I’ve been tracking him since Kjopfthel.” The place meant nothing to Loki, but the guards seemed to know what Angrboda meant and the prefix suggested she was ranked higher than them despite her smaller stature. “Well, Little Mouse?”

“I walked the pathways between the branches of Yggdrasil.”

“So no one knows you’re here?” Angrboda chuckled. “My my, you are a silly mouse. Why come to Utgard?”

Loki’s cheeks flushed. He did feel quite silly, especially as he admitted, “It’s the only city Asgard has on their map.”

“Did you not fancy the villages in the outer ring?”

Loki shook his head, “I didn’t think they’d have what I’m looking for.”

“Oh?” Angrboda cocked an eyebrow, looking down her nose at him. “And what is it you came looking for that Asgard has not already stolen?”

Loki swallowed thickly, his heart thumping painfully. “My parents.”

He expected laughter, but instead Angrboda’s eyes shot wide, staring at him as though he were jumping on a gravestone. Over his shoulder, Loki saw Binr and Rahel with similar looks of appal.

“Your _what_?” Angrboda repeated.

Loki cursed himself inwardly as one of his hands pinched at the skin on the back of his other betraying his nervousness. “My parents,” he repeated softly. “Believe me, please. I’ve spent years trying to work this out and the only thing that makes sense is that I was taken as a baby to Asgard.”

“And what, glamoured to look like them?” Angrboda frowned, closing the space between them until there was only a couple of feet. “Give me your arm.”

It wasn’t a question and even if it had been, Loki’s curiosity wouldn’t have allowed him to refuse. He reached up to Angrboda whose fingers curled around his forearm. Almost immediately his shirt crumbled under the extreme cold of her touch and for a moment, Loki’s eyes widened, fearing he would burn. But he did not, the touch hurt as if she had smacked him, but nothing worse than a mild sting. Instead, and perhaps the point of Angrboda’s demand, Loki’s arm turned the same deep blue as the other Jotun, his lines standing out starkly under her fingers.

Angrboda let go suddenly as though Loki had burned her, his skin returning to Ǽsir pallor. She looked at Loki’s face, his arm and then the guards, eyes sharp, lips pursed a moment. “What’s your name, As?”

“Loki.” It was not lost on him that the joking air from before had completely evaporated.

“Come with me, Loki. And do _not_ stray. You two,” she added with a flash of teeth, Binr and Rahel each snapping to attention. “This conversation never happened. Got it?”

“What conversation?” Binr replied.

“We have seen no one all shift,” Rahel agreed, reaching back to manipulate the ice blocking the archway and allow Loki and Angrboda passage. The ice reformed once they were inside and Loki didn’t have time to so much as glance around before Angrboda was moving, her hand on his back as she urged them towards the dark keep of Utgard.


	2. Prodigal Son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the support and nice comments everyone!
> 
> I'm gonna try get a chapter a week up, we'll see how we go.

“This way,” she hissed, hand on Loki’s back, pushing him alongside her, though this time, no cold tore at his clothes. “Don’t speak until I tell you.”

He’d either done something very wrong or very right in coming here and considering the situation and Angrboda’s demeanour in particular, Loki decided it was in his best interest to comply, jogging slightly to keep pace as she lead him across a vast sheet of ice that seemed to form a courtyard towards a huge black obelisk that as far as Loki could discern was _not_ the main entrance. The main structure of Utgard seemed to be a collection of stone obelisks and ice with smooth pathways carved inside, though Loki had no idea how Angrboda knew her way around, so far each corridor looked the same. Though it wasn’t hard to discern their purpose: they were servant corridors, narrower than their main counterparts, built for getting around quickly and more importantly, _unseen_.

For tense, silent minutes, they climbed higher. Twice, Loki heard other steps, but either the owner was going in a different direction or altered their route once they spotted Angrboda. Once they could go no higher, Angrboda lead the way into the main corridor, though again there was no one around as Angrboda walked swiftly to a large set of dark wooden doors that seemed bizarrely out of place in all the ice and stone, and yet the all-natural aesthetic seemed somehow more serene than Asgard’s golden halls. There were no massive shows of wealth around them unless the detailed figures engraved in the flat ice walls or twisted ice sculptures at the head of what Loki thought was a staircase at the other end of the corridor counted.

They hung in front of the door for several long seconds, giving Loki the impression Angrboda was having second thoughts about bringing Loki here. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, she knocked thrice on the door, hands curled into fists at her side, head tilted up to expose her neck. She looked panicked if Loki had to put a name to it.

The sound echoed harshly in the corridor though after a moment a rough ‘enter’ was called, Angrboda pausing only to compose herself before opening the doors and motioning Loki to follow.

Inside was a lounge area; a raised dias with a miniature depiction of Jotunheim forged from ice sat in the centre of a circle of wooden benches, none of which were currently occupied, though a hide of some kind of animal was laid on one, bearing writing Loki couldn’t make out from just inside the doorway, where Angrboda indicated they were to wait.

To the left and right, stone had been carefully cut to form staircases to a second level, a banister of carefully manipulated ice edged it decorated with panels of ice forming delicately thin images of creatures – presumably native to Jotunheim as Loki didn’t recognise any of the shapes. There were wooden doors on the second level, three by Loki’s count, two on the west side and one on the east. Another door, directly below the eastern one on the upper floor, was open, a huge Jotun striding through the lounge towards the model city, pausing to flick his gaze over to the two at the door and managing a further two steps before doing a double-take. He was bald, much like the guards had been and bore deep scars on his chest and left shoulder and wore multiple bands on Uru on both upper arms. His kilt seemed of different make to the guards, looking glossier, finer, and the Jotun wore some kind of chainmail under it, the links clinking together softly as he moved.

“Lady Angrboda, what magic is this?” the man asked, his tone dark and eyes hardening as he glowered at Loki. “Why is there an As in my keep?”

Angrboda’s chin shot up to the ceiling again, exposing her neck as she offered her hands, palm up to the other Jotun. “No trick my King. He… I believe he is a stolen child, raised in Asgard. He has three house lines.”

The King – Laufey – had opened his mouth to cut Angrboda off only to snap it shut as Angrboda mentioned family lines. “What? You said three?”

“Yes. He said he came here looking for his parents – Asgard does not know he is here – I… if I might be so bold, Laufey-King. I think it may be worth hearing him out.”

Laufey scoffed, “Asgard’s Gatekeeper will know. What’s your real purpose?” he added to Loki, growling.

Feeling his own anger spike, Loki shook his head. “Heimdall doesn’t know I’m here. I’ve made sure.”

“Oh? Did you kill him?”

“No!” Loki shouted, affronted. “I used magic to hide myself from his gaze. I’ve been practicing for months holding the spell so he wouldn’t spot me looking for ways out of Asgard.”

Laufey tilted his head to the side slightly. “Now that _would_ be quite the feat. How do you know he does not just ignore you?” Taking the flush of Loki’s cheeks as an answer, Laufey asked a different question. “Tell me; do you know what the significance of possessing three house lines is?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Loki admitted. He looked between Angrboda and Laufey, noted that they both bore three lines. “I’d guess it’s a sign of ranking? But I don’t understand them or what the patterns mean.”

“If you know magic, can you remove that glamour on you?” Angrboda asked. “It’s strong Seidr. But without knowing your family for sure, I didn’t want to break it properly.”

“I… can try. I didn’t do this to myself, I believe Odin did it,” said Loki looking at the arm Angrboda had destroyed the sleeve of. “Can I ask who you think I am?” From his peripherals, Loki could see Laufey looking to Angrboda for answer too.

“I think you’re someone we thought dead, but I don’t want to say names until I see your full lines,” Angrboda said carefully. “Have you ever met a Jotun before today?”

“Don’t you think if there was one in Asgard, I would be there talking to them, not you?” Loki snapped. Calming himself at Laufey’s glare, Loki closed his eyes and reached deep with his magic. He knew how glamours worked, had used them in Asgard many times, but this particular one was designed to feel normal and took a while to find. Poking at it hurt, but Loki put that down to the spell being old and pulled at it with tendrils of his own power anyway, trying to get it to move over and let the blue out, if not completely release it from him. He was cold, and the blue might be his only chance at understanding what he was.

There was of course every chance the Jotnar would kill him, knowing Loki has come without telling anyone. He pushed and pulled at the spark of Seidr that held pale As skin to his flesh, wincing as it shot pain into his legs and head only to redouble his efforts, the glamour breaking away with a violent snap of golden-green energy, leaving Loki breathless and cradling his head in one hand, his forehead on fire.

“…Farbauti?” Loki startled at the name, blinking hard and looking around, seeing Angrboda to his left looking petrified and before him… Laufey, with tears in his eyes and a hand partly outstretched. “Impossible,” Laufey continued, his voice a whisper. “How..?”

Loki turned to Angrboda, his fingers bumping against something on his head that only made his headache worse. Lifting his other hand to investigate, Loki stilled. Two protrusions on his forehead arching up and back over his head. They felt like… “Horns?” Why did he have horns? No Jotun he’d met so far had horns. He looked down at his arm. Blue skin, dark nails, raised lines. That was all normal. Horns were not part of that. Even his voice was different, deeper, rumbling in his throat with each word.

“Farbauti is the name of our late Queen. She was a prisoner of war in Asgard,” Angrboda explained. Bizarrely, Loki found himself almost at eye-level with Angrboda now. He must have grown taller once the glamour broke. Was this how tall he was supposed to be? Loki turned his head at the sound of footsteps approaching. Laufey slowly came closer, his hand still hovering in the air.

Angrboda slipped back a few paces while Laufey cupped Loki’s chin, tilting his head up. “Those marks. The horns. You shouldn’t be, yet you are. If this is a joke, you ought to get it over with and kill me now.”

Loki’s eyes shot wide. “Wh-why would I do that?”

“Because you are implying that you are my son. Whom I thought dead when Farbauti was captured in Asgard.” Laufey moved his other hand to gently press at one horn, causing Loki to wince. “Farbauti had horns. It is the mark of the royal line of Jotunheim.”

“But. You’re the King,” Loki grunted, “Where are your horns?”

“Farbauti was the only child of the previous monarch. I married in and my lines were altered to form this channel,” Laufey explained, tracing the centre of raised lines down his forehead and then one either side, all connected by a horizontal line. Reaching out, he traced the same lines on Loki’s head, the smaller Jotun shuddering as he felt Laufey basically outline his horns. “You have her face too,” he noted, dropping his hands. “How old are you?”

“Six hundred and fourty-nine.”

Laufey’s brows furrowed. “That sounds a little early, but it’s possible you were born premature. Farbauti wasn’t showing when she was captured.” He turned to Angrboda, “Are there any spells you can perform to prove his identity?”

“It… might be difficult with him also being a magic user, but… I believe so,” she nodded.

Laufey dipped his head. “Go get whatever you need, don’t bother knocking when you return. Boy,” he added to Loki, “Take a seat over there.” He pointed to one of the benches surrounding the model Jotunheim. “I might suggest lying down if your head hurts,” Laufey added once Angrboda had left them, glancing over at Loki who sat with his head between his knees. “Who were you on Asgard anyway?”

“Is this your way of making small talk?” Loki groaned, lying on his side and finding that little better than sitting, but at least it took away some of the pressure his new – or perhaps original – form was causing him.

Laufey shrugged, retrieving the animal skin with runes on from earlier. “Your flippancy doesn’t strike me as that of a peasant.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “They called me Loki. Second son of Odin.”

Laufey stilled, turning to him slowly. “Asgardian prince?” He ran his red eyes over Loki. “What made you come here?”

“Things didn’t add up. I was dark haired where almost every As was blonde, where they were muscly and fought with spears and swords, I was skinny, and preferred magic and projectiles. I took to daggers eventually, but Thor and his friends were insistent I fought like a girl. Which I suppose is true. Queen Frigga taught me dagger work. The As don’t really like magic though, it’s mostly a women’s thing. And Odin was especially irritated whenever he caught me doing it. I think now it was because he was worried I’d undo the glamour,” Loki said, staring up at the painfully boring ceiling. He rather missed the frescos of Asgard. “But in the end, I worked it out over many winters. They always made me bundle up despite not being cold and eventually I realised why. If I got cold enough, my skin would go blue. It… took a lot of midnight dunks in cold water before I realised what was causing it. But every mention of Frost Giants in Asgard is written by an As, most of whom swear blind you carve these lines into children. Which _can’t_ be right,” he flapped, waving a hand. “So I decided to come here and hear it from the horse’s mouth as it were.”

Laufey gave a small snort. “You’re very brave,” he told Loki after a moment. “There are a couple of sects who would carve lines into their children, but these are bastards or lower born children in possession of no lines or people who would hide their lineage in an attempt to better themselves.”

“So they are birthmarks of sorts?”

“Of sorts,” Laufey inclined his head. “As I said, they can be changed, but it requires incredibly strong magic usually only reserved for our nobility, which leaves others sharpened blades if they’re really so desperate. It’s uncommon, but I am aware of it. I do not have any respect for those who partake however.”

Loki shifted to look at his hands, the marks that mean nothing to him, yet are apparently so desired that some Jotun would hurt themselves or their young to achieve them. He looked to Laufey whose back was still to him, looking between the writing on the animal skin and the model planet, “Aren’t you worried I might be an assassin?”

Laufey laughed, not looking up from the writing, “If you want to kill me, be my guest. I’m half certain the only reason I’m alive is that no one else wants to put up with the political hassle.”

“Hassle?” Loki echoed, sitting up on one elbow.

Humming Laufey turned and fell to one knee beside Loki, showing him the animal skin. “Can you read this?”

“It… looks like bookkeeping. You’ve no Uru stock though,” Loki noted with a frown.

“We don’t have Uru mines. Or well. We have a small amount, but Uru is a fashion statement. No one wastes it on forging weapons,” Laufey said with a shake of his head. “The hassle comes from the food requirements. Plants grow scarcely and the few areas they does are magically maintained to allow for better conditions. They are not hugely valued by Jotunheim itself as nearly all species here are carnivores, but we used to trade with Alfheim since a lot of their nobility were enamoured with them. That was before the war. Now we mostly make drinks with them.”

“Why not eat them?”

Laufey shrugged a shoulder, “They can be used for medicinal purposes, but we Jotnar too are carnivores. Meat sustains us. It is that we prioritise.” He took the list back and went to the model of Jotunheim, “Most of us hunt for our food once a month, but some over hunt and hold lavish banquets. They’re causing various creatures to change habitats and it has a knock on effect with breeding.”

“So… create farms?” Loki said slowly as though the solution was obvious.

“Too Asgardian.” Laufey glanced over his shoulder. “I may be King, but suggesting we pen up some of the creatures we particularly like eating and force them to mate will not go down well.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the last person to suggest it is still being called ‘Teat-Sucker’. Which is only a mild improvement from ‘Heidrun-fucker’.” Laufey put a finger on the sculpture and twisted it rather than walking around to show a different section of Jotunheim. “On top of that there are the various requests from people in the kingdom and a fool over there trying to make his own fiefdom. The narcissist even named the place after himself,” he added with distain, pointing to an area some way from Utgard.

“Sounds dull.”

“Kinging is very dull when there are no battles or feasts,” Laufey agreed. “Did Odin not teach you that?”

“Thor would be King of Asgard, not me. But I don’t think Thor realises how mind-numbing maintaining a kingdom is. He always spoke of being king as him going off to war and me being in council meetings,” Loki sighed. “I would like to know why the As call you all barbaric though. Alright you don’t farm, but you keep records, have buildings, some kind of clear hierarchy and you can actually use whole sentences, which is more than I can say of some Asgardians.”

Laufey didn’t answer him but at that same moment, Angrboda slipped back into the room, raising her chin. “My King. My… possible Prince,” she added somewhat hesitantly to Loki. Across her body was a leather satchel containing various herbs and small vials from what Loki could see as she flipped the bag open on her way to Loki.

He sat up properly, noting for the first time how awful his Asgardian clothing looked on his Jotun form and changed the torn shirt and overly tight pants to a simple pair of long dark shorts with a flash of magic.

“You’re very skilled at magic,” Angrboda praised with a small smile as she kneeled before Loki and placed two corked vials filled with clear liquid on the bench beside him. “I need you to create some ice and put it in this vial please and a small amount of blood in the other.”

Loki frowned, “The blood I can do but… I don’t actually know how to make ice. There were no books on ice magic in Asgard.”

“Doesn’t know how to make ice?” Laufey repeated from behind. An odd echo to Odin’s usual complaint of ‘the boy is doing magic again’.

Angrboda nodded, “Well, give me the blood for now. It… will be hard trying to explain something so inherent to Jotnar, but I can probably make do with you sticking your finger in and just making the liquid freeze. Just don’t lick your finger after.”

While Loki faffed and frowned at the vial, trying to make the liquid freeze, Angrboda asked for the same samples from Laufey. “It won’t be able to prove you are Farbauti-Queen’s child, but it will at least prove that you are Laufey-King’s,” Angrboda explained.

“Such a strange thing,” Laufey mused softly, taking a seat opposite Loki while Angrboda worked ruins into the floor to cast whatever spell she had planned.

“What?”

“That you should have so much magic and no idea how to use it,” Laufey told Loki, “while I have perhaps a tenth of your ability and yet no need to think to make ice.”

Loki pouted. “It’s not my fault I- wait, what? How do you know I have lots of magic?”

“The feats you’ve already described and performed suggest you’re no novice, the same with your stature. At six hundred my first born reached my rib cage and my second born was at my armpit. You’re barely at my belly,” said Laufey. “The smaller a Jotun is, the stronger their magic. As you can see with Lady Angrboda.” He gestured to her with a wave of his hand. “She is over a thousand and is one of the Jotun-court’s most valued mages. Her height is not something of critique.”

Loki narrowed his eyes, “If you’re so important, what were you doing on the outskirts of Jotunheim following me around?”

Angrboda looked up, her lips pursed. “Well it isn’t as though I hang around in my rooms all day waiting for summons. Is that what you did in Asgard?” she asked with a hint of disbelief.

“No…” Loki said slowly, “But I wasn’t really allowed to skulk off on my own, so I got used to sneaking around the palace.” He looked down, slowly dislodging his fingers from the frozen vial. The blood was quicker to obtain, done with a flick of a dagger, the blade barely blinking into view before Loki dismissed it again to his pocket dimension.

“Asgard sounds incredibly strict,” Angrboda commented lightly, reaching over slowly to accept Loki’s samples. Loki shrugged, sucking on his bloody finger until the blood clotted. “Did you like it there?”

“It was brighter than here,” Loki replied. “I liked Alfheim better, but I didn’t get to go often.”

Angrboda tilted her head, “Why was that?”

“They had a habit of letting me get lost in the forest where I would play with the fae and magic.” Loki pointed at the markings Angrboda had carved. “I recognise some of this. It’s divination magic.”

She nodded, “That’s right. It will examine both samples and compare them. The liquid comes from a well in the mountains to the west. It’s a very magically dense area, making it a good medium for casting.” Arranging Loki’s samples and Laufey’s in a way that satisfied her, Angrboda raised her hands crossing them slightly and chanting softly, a gentle blue-purple energy rising from the woman and her magic circle. Soft tendrils touched the vials, permeating them and causing the contents to glow.

Entranced, Loki leaned forward, staring openly as Angrboda’s magic reacted with the samples causing the ice in Laufey’s vial to pulse while Loki’s frozen water bubbled. Their blood glowed softly, rippling before crystalizing, breaking the glass of the vials in the process.

Reaching out, Angrboda examined each blood crystal in turn, her magic fading from the air.

“Well?” Loki asked when Angrboda didn’t speak up straight away. His heart beat in his throat.

Looking first to Laufey, Angrboda’s face was hidden by her hair from Loki, though he was not deaf to her words. “He is your son.” Twisting on the ground to him, Angrboda displayed her neck to him, “Welcome to Jotunheim, Loki-Prince.”

* * *

“You don’t have to go, you know,” Helblindi said, eyes on the crackling fire.

Loki looked over, smiling slightly at his older brother hunched in his black feathered cloak, looking like a large angry bird more than the second prince of Jotunheim. “I kind of do though,” he said raising a hand to scratch at the base of his left horn. “It is not as though I’m leaving forever. And anyway, with me not encouraging you to mischief at every turn, Father and Býleistr can get on with Kinging in peace.”

Helblindi chuckled at that, “You were just having fun. And despite being harrowing sometimes, you’ve certainly made the last four hundred years interesting, Brother.”

“Naw, are you worried you’ll be bored?”

Helblindi shoved Loki in the horns bowling him over, Loki laughing all the while. “More like I’ll have peace on the long nights,” he accused, though there was no heat to Helblindi’s words. “Have you decided where you’ll go?”

He nodded, “Midgard. They are not as connected to the Nine Realms as Alfheim or Vanaheim and I would not be comfortable returning to Asgard.” He sat up, pulling his knees to his chest, looking at the flickering crimson flames. “I’ve spoken with Angrboda, she’ll be able to contact me if you need it.”

“Did you say goodbye?”

“It’s not goodbye if I’m coming back,” Loki pointed out.

Helblindi shot him a flat look. “You didn’t say goodbye to your Ǽsir family and that was four hundred years ago. You’re a man now.”

“Oh god is that what I am?” Loki’s expression twisted into one of feigned disgust. “Does that mean I’m going to start wrinkling?”

“Oh no, Jotun crack when they get older.” Helblindi managed to keep a straight face for a whole minute as Loki’s eyes bugged out of his head, before Helbindi snorted, rocking with cackling laughter.

“Blindi!” Helblindi continued laughing as Loki swiped a handful of snow at him.

Shaking the snow from his long hair and cloak Helblindi smiled at Loki. “You really believed that? Come on, Little Loki, you’ve seen elderly Jotnar before.”

“No one that old really,” Loki huffed, cheek resting against one closed fist. “Father’s probably the oldest and he doesn’t look that bad.”

“Must be all that infant blood he bathes in.”

“I heard it was the blood of virgins,” Loki quipped back, the brothers grinning at each other.

Helblindi shook his head, “Stupid Ǽsir rumours.”

Loki hummed in agreement, reaching out to stoke the fire. “I did say when I was going, to Bý and Father. Then I spent a couple of days in Fánlar with Angrboda while I waited for you to agree to meet.”

“So I am the last to know?”

“You’re _always_ the last to know,” Loki accused, nudging him gently. “You should spend more time in Utgard or my room will look more lived in that yours and I’ll be in a different realm!”

Chuckling Helblindi leant back on his elbows to look up at the starry sky. “Rooms are silly constraints anyway.”

“Says the man who has fallen from the top of Utgard while sleeping so often he has to tie his ankle to the roof.” Loki shot him a flat look, “You’re a calamity in Jotnar form.”

Helbindi snorted good-naturedly. “Jotun-calamity? I like that. That should be my kenning.”

Loki gave an exaggerated groan and hid his face in his hand. “Oblivion, what have I done?”

The brothers passed a couple more hours in amicable companionship before Loki rose, his skin paling as he shrunk down to a more human-acceptable height. The bands of Uru that had rested on his left upper arm slid down, strands of green energy catching them before they fell from Loki’s wrist, twisting around and shrinking them to fit his new skin, the mark of House Laufey still visible on the metal. A plain cotton shirt and trousers shimmered into being along with a pair of boots to cover his feet.

“So this is what you looked like?” Helblindi noted before looking offended. “Oh no. Brother. Boots?”

Loki waved a hand dismissively. “I’m going already, don’t start.”

“What if the Midgardians are barefooted too?”

“Then I’ll have Angrboda pass on that your wisdom has reached the other realms,” Loki said with a roll of his eyes. “But until then I’m going to assume shoes are a perfectly normal thing.” He pulled his pack from its pocket dimension and turned to the rock face behind them where a thin crack would allow a small being to squeeze through, eventually leading to the pathway in Yggdrasil that lead to Midgard. “Bye, Blindi.”

Helblindi rose to put out their dwindling fire. “Farewell, Little Brother. If you get into trouble, you know where I’ll be.” He was gone with a flap of his cape, leaving Loki alone to sidle into the gap towards a new adventure.


	3. Avengers Assemble (part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> I started working full time again last week for the first time in a year, so while that's great for my dwindling bank account it's less great for my energy levels. I *think* I'm happy with how this chapter is, but I might go back later in the week and do some edits when my brainpower picks back up, which might push the next chapter back a day or two.
> 
> Hopefully we're all good though.
> 
> Also warning: It has been literally forever since I last wrote romance. I apologise in advance for any bad dialogue you may find XD

\- **Earth 2012, Stark Tower, New York** -

“How does it look?”

“ _Like Christmas, but with a little more… me_.”

Loki chuckled, “Humble as ever I see.” He looked back to the energy readings on the holoscreen. “Congratulations, Stark Tower is now running on clean, self-sustaining power.” Pushing away from the table Tony had set him up at, Loki went to the bar against the wall of the penthouse, collecting a bucket of ice and a bottle of champagne.

“ _Ooh, I hear rattling,_ ” Tony’s voice said over the speakers, “ _Are we celebrating_?”

“It’s as good a reason as any,” Loki said easily, collecting two glasses with a free hand.

Outside, a heavy thunk of metal on metal announced Tony’s arrival. Mechanical arms reached towards Tony as he strode towards the glass doors, dismantling the Iron Man suit with ease. Turning as Tony entered the penthouse, Loki’s smile faded into a concerned frown, mimicking Tony’s expression.

“Is everything alright?”

“Coulson just tried to call me,” Tony replied, “Any idea why?”

Loki shrugged. “I’m off duty, as far as I know he has no reason to contact you today. And as I told you, I have no inclination to work for either you or SHIELD against the other,” he reminded, placing a champagne flute atop the bar and filling it before pouring his own drink.

Tony frowned for a moment longer before relenting, accepting the glass and smirking, “Ah yes. The spy who doesn’t want the other spies to know he has succumbed to my charms.”

“Mhmm,” Loki hummed, walking around the bar and closing the remaining distance by pulling Tony to him via his belt loops, pressing their lips together before grinning down at the billionaire, “I rather think it is _me_ who has charmed _you_.”

“Agree to disagree.” Tony shot Loki a smug look and took his free hand, leading them to the sofa, crossing his legs one over the other and shifting to relax against Loki, the taller man slipping an arm around Tony’s shoulders.

“ _Sir, Agent Coulson is on the line. Again_ ,” reported JARVIS with as much displeasure as Tony’s groan conveyed.

“Can’t you call him off?” he asked Loki, pulling out his phone and shifting so Loki wasn’t in shot of the camera. “You have reached the life model of Tony Stark,” he said with a flat expression, “Mr Stark is unable to take your call at this moment, please try again later. Much later.”

“ _Sir, my protocols are being breached_.” No sooner had JARVIS got the words out then the elevator popped open to reveal Phil Coulson, shooting a knowing look to Loki before addressing Tony.

“I’m sorry for the interruption, Mr Stark, but I do really need to talk with you,” he said striding into the room with a small smile. “If I’d have known it was date night, I’d have just called Agent Laufeyson instead.”

“Date night?” Loki parroted, frozen with champagne in one hand, the other behind the sofa and his person entirely too close to Tony to wave off as professional. Clearing his throat, he tried vainly, “Phil, this uh, isn’t what it looks like.”

“Phil? His first name is Agent,” Tony insisted, standing to look between the two SHIELD operatives.

Holding out a black file to Tony, Phil cocked an eyebrow at Loki, “It’s not? That’s a shame, because if you were dating like I assumed I wouldn’t have to reprimand you for bothering a Person of Interest. Mr Stark has already made his view on SHIELD agents in his home and company very clear.”

Loki paled, “How long have you known?”

“Natasha saw you go with Stark the night he nearly blew his house up.” Phil turned back to Tony. “I need you to look at this, Mr Stark.”

Tony crossed his arms, unimpressed. “I don’t like being handed things.”

Sighing, Loki stood and took the file from Phil with an apologetic look, opening it to find information on the Avengers Initiative. “I thought the Avengers Programme was scrapped?”

“Avengers?” Tony was at his elbow in a second, slipping the file from his fingers and taking it over to his holoscreens. In moments, videos of Captain America, the Hulk and Iron Man were playing in the air. “I recall being told I’m volatile, self-obsessed and don’t play well with others. What changed?” he demanded sharply.

Loki shook his head, at a loss. Beside him, Phil clasped his hands in front of him. “The situation has changed. An unknown person appeared in our DC facility and took possession of an artefact called the Tesseract as well as several agents with some kind of spear. We’re looking for assistance with locating the individual and recapturing the Tesseract.”

“And you want _me_?” Tony cocked an eyebrow.

“Both of you technically,” Phil allowed with a shrug. “They have Barton,” he told Loki, “This is a level seven, all agents are on high alert and are to report to the helicarrier.”

“Understood.” Loki cast a wary glance at Tony.

Phil tapped him on the shoulder, “I’ll bring Stark when he’s done, get to your rendezvous point with the Air Force. Oh, and Loki?” Loki twisted on his heel, still stepping towards the elevator. “If anyone asks I called you on my way to Stark Tower.”

Loki nodded, “Thanks, Phil.”

* * *

“ _Suspect has escaped. Stark and Cap are in pursuit_.”

“Oh dear,” Loki frowned, looking to the other SHIELD agents in the room. He, Maria Hill and Phil Coulson stood on the bridge of the helicarrier with Director Nick Fury. The situation was growing dire, not only had the Tesseract been stolen by an alien entity, said alien was escaping detainment despite having just been captured in Stuttgard only hours before.

“No shit,” Fury growled, throwing a glare over his shoulder at Loki before asking Natasha Romanoff over the coms, “What happened? Was it Barton?”

“ _No. Some guy in a red cape with a hammer_.”

Loki’s blood ran cold at the description. It couldn’t be? Taking a quick glance around, Loki found his chance to slip away, pulling out his flip phone as he walked down the corridor to the lab Stark and Banner had been working in.

“ _Kinda busy here,_ ” Tony’s voice grunted once the call connected.

“I’m aware. I need a visual on the red caped individual. Send it to one of the screens in Banner’s lab,” said Loki taking a sharp left into the lab. He heard Tony give the command to JARVIS and Loki swore as the image flickered into existence.

“Who’s that?” Banner asked, getting up from his desk. The screen showed the HUD of the Iron Man suit, and even though it had been years, Loki recognised every one of the figures Tony and Captain America were engaging. Blonde hair whipped around Thor’s face as he flew back from Captain America’s punch, Sif replacing him and putting the Captain on defence, stepping back to avoid her sword.

“Anyone you know?” Loki turned his head to see Phil. “I saw you sneak off, I’m guessing from your reaction just now you know these guys?” Phil asked, pointing at the screen.

“ _Just gonna throw it out there; if you guys have any back up, we’d kind of appreciate it!_ ” Tony’s voice echoed over the speakers. “ _It’s like Fellowship of the Ring out here except Boromir’s part Pikachu_. _Oof!_ ”

Thor and Sif weren’t alone, as Tony righted himself from a blow to the side, Loki spotted the familiar spiked mace favoured by Hogun with Volstagg and Fandral also coming into the fray. “They’re outnumbered,” Banner noted. “And not by pushovers either. More aliens?”

“Not for long.” Loki put the phone back to his ear, “Hold tight, I’m on my way.”

He hung up as Phil questioned, “And how do you plan to do that? They’re still thousands of miles away.”

Holding Phil’s gaze Loki reached into his pocket dimension and removed an Uru dagger. “I’m going to teleport.” He flipped the dagger to offer it hilt first to Phil. “Coming?”

Phil looked at the dagger a moment then to Loki. He closed the gap between them and accepted the blade. “I always wondered where you hid these,” he said with a small smile. “So… how do we do this?”

“Like this.” Loki smiled back, putting his hand to Phil’s shoulder. “Get ready, I’m aiming for the middle of the battle.”

They vanished in a flash of green and Loki felt a felt his pride swell when Phil barely took a second to take the situation in and parry Fandral, who was decidedly more shook by the agents’ sudden appearance. Loki wasn’t so lucky, grunting in pain as he was caught in the shoulder by Volstagg’s axe. Stumbling backward, Loki grit his teeth, putting a hand to his shoulder, felt the hot warm blood seeping through his suit. Phil would be killed if this went on too long, nevermind Rogers or Tony. They needed the fight to stop and Loki only had one card to play.

He gathered his magic and soon grimacing Loki’s were appearing all over the darkened forest, startling the Asgardians and humans alike. His name echoed from both parties as the illusions slowly broke apart in shards of magical green energy. Loki turned to the flutter of red to his left.

“Brother?”

“Hello, Thor,” Loki inclined his head shifting to stand with the humans who were taking their chance to regroup while Sif and the other warriors flocked around Thor. The Crown Prince of Asgard had his eyebrows bunched together and a look of broken confusion on his face. Beside him, Sif put a hand on his shoulder.

“Loki, I don’t understand, why are you here?” Thor pushed Sif’s hand away and took several steps forward, pausing when Tony spoke up.

“Lokes, who are these guys?”

“Do not call my brother so familiarly, Mortal!” Thor snapped. “Brother,” he turned back to Loki. “Come. We can get the Tesseract and go home, to Asgard.”

“Asgard is not my home, Thor,” Loki said softly, shaking his head. “And I am not leaving Earth just because you say so. You let the creature using the Tesseract escape. It’s going to take hours to find him again,” he added angrily. “Do you _ever_ _think_? Why must you always run into things head first? We had it under control.”

Thor’s anger rose in kind as he pulled himself up to his full height, brandishing Mjӧlnir. “ _I_ don’t think? These stupid creatures think that they can harness the power of the Tesseract,” he yelled, jerking Mjӧlnir at the humans behind Loki. “They are opening themselves up to declarations of war from countless planets and they don’t even know how to get into space without the equivalent energy discharge of levelling their own cities!”

“And?” Loki glowered. “They are learning. Asgard doesn’t need to police the Nine Realms, and it especially does not need to run around conquering and colonising them just because some old fart in an eye patch thinks he knows best!” He didn’t back down, getting into Thor’s face, a move so unusual for the Loki Thor remembered that the God of Thunder took half a step back. “I _live_ here. If anyone tried to attack I would defend this planet with my life and offer any information that would help. I don’t wait on Odin’s orders and I don’t obey yours. Call Heimdall and all of you go home.”

He should have expected it really, knowing Thor as he did, but Loki staggered, doubling over as a blow to his gut from Mjӧlnir winded him. “I’m not leaving without you,” Thor growled. “Even if I have to break all of your bones.” The next swing of the hammer sent him flying and suddenly the battle was back on. Loki could hear Tony’s repulsor blasts and the dull sound of Rogers’s shield ricocheting. Gun fire also sounded faintly, worrying Loki.

“Phil, please have realised that won’t work,” Loki mumbled to himself, picking himself up from where he’d landed on the floor. Daggers were in his hands before he even caught sight of Thor, grunting Loki crossed his blades defensively before him, barely catching the hammer’s handle and hurriedly kicking Thor in the chest while he was overbalanced. “Can we not do this?” he asked Thor, already aware that Thor was not backing down.

“Where were you, Loki?!” Thor roared, getting back to his feet, lightning crackling around the hammer. “I thought you’d been kidnapped. But instead you were just living it up on Midgard creating havoc? Do you have any idea how upset I was?!”

The lightning struck, Loki felt his skin burn but held firm. Thor had hit him with lightning more than a few times during their childhood, sometimes accidental, sometimes in spars and though it had never been this strong or for this long, Thor wasn’t the only person who had grown stronger in their four hundred year separation.

Magic crackled from Loki’s fingers more violent than Thor had known it, but more controlled too. He threw his daggers with more difficulty than he would have liked, but both blades struck Thor, one in the arm wielding Mjӧlnir, the other in Thor’s thigh. Lighting ceased as quickly as it came, Loki stumbling forward before catching his footing and breaking into a run. Fire burst into life around Loki’s hands as he leapt, narrowly avoiding Mjӧlnir as she flew towards him. With a wave of one hand in a cutting motion, Loki sent a whip of fire straight at Thor.

Far from the battling Avengers and Asgardian warriors, lightning and fire blazed between the trees, Thor and Loki wholly unconcerned with the scope of their scuffle. After some time, the explosive energy settled down to nothing, though those still fighting were unaware of the victor until a shout rang through the forest, startling combatants and drawing all eyes to one man.

“ENOUGH!” Loki looked around at the still Avengers, warriors and SHIELD agents (plural, as it seemed Romanoff had joined the fray at some point). Stepping forward and returning to the others, Loki dragged an unconscious Thor by his scruff, his SHIELD issue suit in absolute tatters, the trousers torn and muddy, the jacket gone, shirt half blasted off and Loki had no idea where his tie had ended up. With a growl he threw Thor bodily at Volstagg, the man dropping his axe to safely catch the prince. Pointing to the quinjet abandoned atop an incline far enough from the battle it looked unharmed, Loki shouted, “I don’t give a damn who any of you are or where you came from! You’re all getting in that _fucking_ jet and we’re going to debrief!” Storming past the gawking men and women, Loki shoved a hand through his hair which had blown everywhere and frizzed horribly with the static from Mjӧlnir’s lightning. When he didn’t hear footsteps, he glared darkly first at the humans, “That’s an order or I’m flying back to Fury without you.” To the Asgardians, he hissed venomously, “As the second son of Odin and victor in battle against the first, I _shall not_ repeat myself. Get on the plane.”

“Come on, Sif,” Fandral muttered, nudging her arm before starting forward. “Thor would want us to follow. To get answers.”

On the human side, it was Phil who was first to approach; he had a nasty cut on his head and limped a little though made a point of smiling kindly at Loki, bumping his shoulder once he reached the man. “You’re an alien, aren’t you?”

They both already knew the answer, but Loki smiled all the same. “Yeahhh,” he drawled, his anger falling away. “Do you want to handcuff me?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“No.”

Phil sighed, “That’s a shame.” They continued walking in silence until they reached the quinjet. “Can you vouch for these people? Or if not, get them into Banner’s cell? Fury’s going to blow a gasket over this one.”

“He’s not the only one,” Natasha appeared like a spectre beside them, Rogers and the Asgardians picking up the rear. Tony was already little more than a speck the air, clearly not joining them. “Stark says he’ll meet us on the helicarrier. He sounded pretty angry.”

Phil and Loki shared a look before Loki reached into his pocket to find his phone a smouldering mess with chunks of burned plastic and polyester clinging to it. “Damn.”

“If you’re still employed R&D’ll get you another,” Natasha soothed, walking past them to get to the cockpit. “So, do aliens heal or would they appreciate the first aid kit?”

“Are… we just… accepting aliens now?” Rogers asked slowly, looking Loki over with noticeably more trepidation than he had before. He shifted out of the way to allow the Asgardians on, Volstagg and Sif easing the still unconscious Thor into a seat.

“Well, you would likely be seeing a lot of them if you activated the Tesseract,” Fandral noted, bruised but otherwise unhurt. “I am Fandral by the way. I’m assuming Loki has not mentioned us.” He offered his hand for Rogers to shake.

Rogers considered the hand a moment before taking it. “Steve. And no, Loki didn’t, but then I haven’t known him long.”

“The woman is Sif, the big one is Volstagg, the small very angry one is Hogun and the unconscious oaf is Thor,” Loki reeled off from his position crouched on the floor, his attention focused on patching up Phil’s head wound. “This man is Phil Coulson, the one flying is Natasha Romanoff, both of whom were my colleagues – hopefully still will be,” he added, “And the other small grumpy one in the metal suit that flew off was Tony Stark. He may or may not be at our destination.”

“Are we talking about the brother thing?” Phil asked, fingers ghosting over the bandage on his head before shifting to help Loki tend to his shoulder wound.

“Not in a small pressurised container, Phil,” Loki replied tiredly.

Natasha called from the cockpit, “But a large pressurised one is fine?”

Loki put his head back against the hull. “Well, there is a nice glass room where Thor and I can have a less destructive shouting match. And I’m very unlikely to set anything on fire.”

“The fire was you?” Rogers shot, looking more concerned than angry.

“Oh yes, I love fire,” Loki smiled, quickly raising his hands for peace when he saw Rogers wasn’t laughing. “I’m a mage, Captain. I perform lots of magics. Fire, ice, illusions. They are what I do best. I’m also capable of teleportation, that’s how Agent Coulson and I reached the battle just now.”

Rogers didn’t seem any more at ease for the information and Loki found him praying for a swift flight back to the helicarrier.

* * *

As to be expected, Fury was not pleased to discover that one of his high level agents was an illegal alien and that said illegal alien knew the people that let their suspect get away.

“I’m going to give you two minutes to explain yourselves before I decide whether or not to reprimand your asses. Agent Laufeyson, you first.”

“What? Laufey?” Thor frowned. The man had woken up as they were departing the quinjet and had reluctantly agreed to follow along. Currently they were all sat in a briefing room around a large table. Well, most of them were sat. Tony leaned against the wall by the door, a cut lip and bruise on his right cheek adding to his radiating anger, though Loki was making an effort not to look in that direction. He’d talk with Tony later if the man wanted to, for now, he needed to try and explain himself without setting Thor off. “Loki, what foolishness is this?”

“Yes… About that.” Loki cleared his throat and stood, pinching the back of his hand. “I’ll… get to that. First, Asgard.” He licked his lips and looked to Fury, reaching out and twisting his hand. A green hologram with nine circles joined by the vague outline of a tree appeared in the centre of the table. “So, thousands of years ago there was an accord, called the Joining of the Nine Realms, where Asgard shared its interspace travel, Bifrost, with eight other realms; Vanaheim, Alfheim, Svartalfheim, Jotunheim, Midgard, Niflheim, Nidavellir and Muspelheim,” he explained, pointing to each realm’s orb in turn. “In the last two to three thousand years, the King of Asgard went around subjugating the surrounding realms, dictating over them for reasons I don’t understand-.”

“Our Father and Grandfather brought peace to the Nine Realms,” Thor interjected hotly.

Loki rolled his eyes, “Well, whatever the reasons, they did in fact bring war to each realm, Thor. That cannot be argued. The Dark Elves were wiped out in their battle with Bor, their entire planet is now a desolate wasteland.”

“Are we gonna become a wasteland too?” Tony asked from the corner.

“No, Earth – Midgard to them – is under a protective order from Asgard. Your species is considered too primitive to be a danger to any other realm and was seen more as an elaborate holiday destination for the other races in the Nine Realms. Asgard’s watchman is actually supposed to keep an eye out for threats to the Earth. They are just… are selective about which threats I guess?”

“What does Asgard get out of it?” Fury asked, “I don’t assume they do it out of the goodness of their hearts.”

“The glory of battle,” Thor insisted at the same time Loki replied, “Wealth.”

“What?” Thor snapped his attention to Loki. “No, we campaign for the stories.”

“And yet the treasury holds enough gems and gold of Midgardian origin I could build at least twelve life sized statues of myself,” Loki shot back. “I did try telling you before I left, Thor. Asgard is not as golden and righteous as it first appears.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Thor and the warriors he came with are from Asgard. Thor himself is the Crown Prince so it would cause diplomatic issues if we all can’t all agree on what to do about the Tesseract. I haven’t been on Asgard for the last four hundred years, so I am afraid I have no intel to offer regarding why they seek the cube.”

“I told you, we seek the Tesseract to take it to Asgard,” Thor grit out. “Midgard is not ready for such power and Asgard can protect it. Now stop dancing around the question, Loki. You’re my brother, why do you not include yourself in Asgard’s numbers, why do you call yourself after the monstrous Frost Giant that took our Father’s eye?”

“Because that monster _is_ my Father!” Loki felt his face flush and the bite of his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. “You’re not my brother, Thor. Odin took my mother prisoner during the war with Jotunheim. He put a spell on me so I looked like this and pretended I was his son.” He swallowed thickly, fingers uncurling to hang limp at his sides. He had to do this now, before Thor spoke again and he lost his nerve. “But I’m not. I’m a Frost Giant.”

Magic shone over Loki’s body as he shifted his appearance, blue skin and raised house lines shimmering slightly in the room’s lighting. As he grew taller, his horns faded into being and his clothing changed to a lush black Kjilt decorated with links of Uru obscuring the long dark shorts he wore beneath. The bracelets he wore on his wrist in his other skin were now bands of Uru on his upper arms.

He looked around at the startled gasps of the humans and Asgardians, taking in their reactions, particularly Tony’s. The human’s eyes were wide in surprise, slowly flickering up and down over Loki’s body before looking at his face again.

“Your eyes changed colour,” Tony noted. A few feet away, Rogers make a choking noise.

“The man just grew three feet and turned blue and you notice his eyes changed?”

Tony shrugged, turning to Rogers. “I didn’t fancy pointing that out when Point Break over there called his dad a monster. Seemed a bit tactless.” At least Rogers had the decency to blush in embarrassment.

“Sorry, Loki. Tony’s right, that was… very thoughtless of me.”

Loki was cut off replying to Rogers by Thor slamming his hands on the table. “Enough of your tricks, Loki! You are a son of Asgard, _my brother_ , stop your lies. You are a son of Odin, not Laufey.”

“If it’s an illusion, Thor, it is a very good one,” Fandral murmured softly.

“It’s not an illusion,” Loki hissed. “But I’ll thank you for not jumping up and trying to murder me.” He reached up to rub between his horns letting out an irritated sigh. “What could I do to make you believe me? Or are you actually going to take my suggestion of going back to Asgard and speak with Odin?”

Thor – blessedly – was silent as he thought it over. “A true Frost Giant’s touch burns.”

Loki narrowed his eyes, “Ymir’s tit, you’re a moron. I am not hurting you to prove a point.”

“So you can’t. Which means you’re lying.”

Loki’s lips curled into a snarl. “You know what I take that back.” For nine feet tall Loki was fast, leaping over the table to grab Thor’s forearm. “I hope Odin weeps when he sees what I’ve done to you,” he growled while Thor’s smug grin turned into a cry of agony. The skin under Loki’s fingers turned white, then blue, then black, cracking and flaking, blood seeping sluggishly down Thor’s elbow. Loki forced himself to stare at Thor’s pained face, his eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

A blade thrust under Loki’s chin. “Enough, you’ve made your point,” said Sif, the dagger she held digging in slightly as though she intended to use it to push Loki off. He pulled back, slipping off of the table and allowed his skin to shift back to pale As, slowly walking back around to take his previous seat. No one blocked his path.

Silence fell in the room, everyone digesting the information Loki had given about other planets, himself and his assault on Thor or else trying to work out what they planned to say next.

“Hey, Fury.”

“What, Stark?” Fury shifted his gaze over from Thor, who was hunched over his frostbitten arm, expression a tight blend of anger, confusion and horror.

“Is Loki fired?”

“Not at this moment but he does need to be reassessed,” Fury allowed.

Tony nodded, pushing up from the wall. “Cool, you can do that later. Loki, I need to talk to you. In private.”

Fury frowned, “Stark-.”

“Non-negotiable, Nick. He’s an alien, not a secret supervillain. We’re gonna go talk in the lab,” Tony explained. “You aren’t interested in the Tesseract are you?” he added to Loki who shook his head.

“If I had been I would have taken it years ago. I could not care less for the thing.” He slowly stood up and looked to Fury for a dismissal. “I am sorry I hid my extra-terrestrial status, Director, but I kept my deceit to a minimum.”

Fury jerked his head at Thor. “You could have done that to any one of us?”

Loki shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve never tried it in this form, but probably. In the other one yes, but I can touch surfaces without freezing them too.”

The Director nodded. “I expect a full debrief on your species, but I’ll allow it to wait until we get the Tesseract. Dismissed, Agent.”

He saw Sif and Hogun shoot him dirty looks as he walked away, following Tony quietly to the lab.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was an alien,” said Loki, moving to sit on one of the desks while Tony paced some feet away. “It had nothing to do with clearance levels, I just didn’t want to tell anyone.”

“Yeah, I kinda guessed, seeing as your bro there didn’t know you were adopted,” Tony noted. “How come you didn’t tell him? Kids here aren’t told they’re adopted all the time, work it out and then the whole family sorts it out.”

“The whole family being the father who tried to ban me from using magic so I wouldn’t work it out, the mother who enabled him whilst also giving into me and teaching me magic so I’d listen to her and the older brother who would regularly tell anyone who heard that he would ‘slay all the Frost Giants’? That family?” Loki raised an eyebrow, shook his head. “There’s a childhood game in Asgard called ‘catch the Frost Giant’ it’s like tag, but only one person isn’t it and everyone else has a wooden sword.”

“So they’re all racist?” Tony surmised. “Did you think we would be too?”

Loki shook his head. “It never occurred to me to tell any of you. For me… I was living the lie that I had grown up believing was reality but now wasn’t on my own terms. I think, it was possibly my way of coping with it, since I’d never come clean to Asgard before now.” He pinched at his skin, looking down at his hands as he tried to figure his own intentions out. “I’m sorry.”

Hands gently pulled at Loki’s stopping him from picking at his hand. “I hear you. It’s just… a lot to take in. I feel kinda small and worthless you know? Like a cheap fling when I thought we were more.”

Loki looked up to meet Tony’s gaze, “You are more to me than that. And I’m sorry for not realising that my lies would hurt you, that they could be worse than leading with the truth.”

“How though? You said you were gone from Asgard for four hundred years,” Tony said. “The two years we’ve known each other must be like two days to you. How long do you live anyway?”

“About five thousand years. I’m a little over one thousand now,” said Loki softly. “But time still passes and has an effect. I still get impatient and want to do things tomorrow where older members of my race might suggest doing that same thing one hundred years later. The eight years I’ve been on Earth are not meaningless to me. And I have not forgotten that we started out as a one night stand because you were dying of palladium poisoning and wanted to cross gay sex off of your bucket list.” He shifted to pull Tony closer, Loki’s legs gently circling Tony’s. “You’re young and stupid, Tony Stark. But I’m older and stupider and I still love you. For however long we have, I will love you with all my heart, never doubt that.”

Tony sighed, “Did you have to call me stupid? I thought we were having a moment.” He stepped back, Loki’s legs shifting to allow him exit only for Tony to hop up on the desk beside Loki. “You’re a dumbass. But I got used to thinking of you as my dumbass. I thought Thor was going to kill you. And then I got mad because I thought you could have stopped the Shakespeare Brigade but didn’t just to show off. And then I saw their fucking faces when you turned blue. They _recoiled_. Every one of them, including the guy who called you ‘brother’. Yeah, you looked different, but nine feet of horny blue man is still the exact same amount of snark and sarcasm I get from six feet of pale, giant forehead you,” he said, poking Loki in the forehead.

“My forehead is not gigantic,” Loki huffed, covering it with his hand and lightly swatting at Tony’s fingers. He was smiling though and could see the grin pulling at Tony’s lips.

“Are you kidding? I could build a skyscraper there,” Tony teased. They chuckled for a moment before Tony changed topic. “Your brothers then, are they..?”

“They’re Jotun, yes.”

“Well, I was gonna say ‘real’.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Yes. Real. Real and blue. As I told Director Fury, I lied very little. Just I found out about my adoption four hundred years ago, not ten.”

“And your Mom didn’t die in childbirth.”

“Well it’s a bit hard to explain why I’d be adopted from a prison cell. Or why my mother was in prison when I’m not actually that familiar with Earth’s wars.”

“Can you explain it now?”

Loki nodded, reaching to hold one of Tony’s hands. The human didn’t pull away, for which Loki was grateful. “During the war between Asgard and Jotunheim, a weapon was taken from the Jotun during a battle between both kings. My Mother planned to sneak into Asgard and retrieve the weapon, only she was caught. She was early into her pregnancy so few knew about it and while I don’t know the specifics, I know she died in Asgard and that I was born some time between her capture and the peace treaty between the two realms being signed.”

“Do you think Asgard killed her?”

“I feared that might be the case, and so I didn’t consider taking my discovery to my adoptive parents, for fear I would be killed, or worse, magically be made to forget, and possibly end up discovering my true heritage over and over again, only to keep being forced to forget.”

Tony squeezed his hand gently. “Yeah, that would… Suck. Really hard.”

“It would.” Loki nodded, looking at the ground. Slowly he turned to their hands before pulling his gaze up to Tony’s face. “Are… we okay?” he asked hesitantly.

“…Yeah, we’re okay.” Tony leaned over to rest his head on Loki’s shoulder. “I bet Jotunheim is great in summer.”

Loki chuckled. “It’s pretty much permanently winter there, but now that I don’t have to worry about being exposed, I’ll use some ice magic next heatwave.”

“What if I want to just lie on you? Like a giant ice pack?”

“You wouldn’t mind a nine foot giant in the bed?”

“It was a hundred and four degrees last year. You could be pink with back spots and made of jelly and I still wouldn’t care so long as you were colder than my fridge.” When Loki was done laughing Tony added, “But I like the blue. I don’t know what the lines were for or the loincloth, but you looked just as sexy as this. Maybe more so.”

“The lines are like birthmarks. The Kjilt is traditional garb. All Jotun are assimilated to the climate of Jotunheim, but other than Helblindi – one of my brothers –insisting that you can’t wear shoes in Jotunheim, there isn’t actually much of a dress code. I usually wear shorts and a top when lounging around Utgard.”

“Is that what your house is called?”

Loki nodded, “It’s the capital of Jotunheim, a massive keep that serves as a castle, housing the royal house, servants and some nobles, though most have their own houses further out.”

“And you’re a prince?”

“Adopted second Prince of Asgard and third born Prince of Jotunheim. In either situation the throne will not be mine, so it’s a rank in name only I suppose,” said Loki with a shrug.

Tony nodded. “And magic is real?”

“Sort of. It’s just advanced technology when you break it down. I manipulate energy stored in my body and release it as another matter. It’s… a lot more complicated to explain than to do, especially when some is inherent. Like when I burned Thor’s arm. All Jotun have access to ice magic, it’s how we make weapons and structures. But we can also control our external temperature. It’s meant to be for diving, but it can also be used to frost burn warmer species.” He lifted his free hand, the palm of it shifting blue as he generated a shard of ice before twisting it to form a thin disk with the inner pattern of Tony’s arc reactor.

“Little smaller than the real one,” Tony noted with a smile, sitting straighter and reaching out to take the disk. “Ah, wow. That is really cold.” He poked it and moved it from hand to hand. “But it’s not melting despite being so thin.”

“Careful, you’re going to hurt your hands,” Loki chastised softly, Tony’s palms already an angry red. It was only a small bit of ice though and seeing the fascinated delight in Tony’s eyes as he switched into full scientist mode, already mumbling and testing theories, had Loki smiling in adoration and relief.

“Hey, Lokester,” Tony held the disk up. “Can I lick this?”

“It might stick to your tongue,” Loki said after a moment’s bafflement because _of course_ Tony wanted to lick the thing. “But other than that it shouldn’t harm you.”

Tony considered the information for a moment, looking at the disk in his palm. He nodded firmly, “I’m gonna lick it.”

Loki hopped off the desk, “I’ll get you some coffee.”

“SHIELD coffee is gross.”

“So have JARVIS make you one at the tower. Magic, remember?” Loki winked.

Tony’s eyes blew wide. “Oh shit yeah. You can teleport. Hey, can I be a dick and ask for a Caffè Coretto from Italy?”

Loki rolled his eyes, “Maybe when the world _doesn’t_ need saving?”

Tony sighed dramatically. “Fiiiiine. I’ll take an Americano from the little coffee place we like down from Stark Industries. But you’re paying.” He caught Loki’s arm and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Boo.”

Loki startled a moment, a look of confusion crossing Tony’s face in turn, his head cocking slightly to one side. A smile slowly pulled on Loki’s lips. “I love you too,” he said, disappearing to downtown New York in a flicker of green.


	4. Big Blue, The Other Guy and a Fuck-tonne of aliens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments, I love reading them - they really make my day!

His stomach was still flipping and full of butterflies as Loki let himself into the coffee shop, running the conversation with Tony over in his head and trying to hide his goofy smile. To hear Tony say he loved him, even after his Jotun reveal and particularly after Thor’s reaction to it meant more than words could quantify. It was still baffling to Loki to have people support him even after all these years. His birth family still felt so different to how he remembered Odin, Frigga and Thor treating him in Asgard. He had friends, both Jotun and human who acted nothing like the people he’d interacted with in Asgard. Their praise was genuine and not reluctantly doled out, those who now knew about his magic showed excitement or acceptance not fear and distrust. Fury hadn’t set him in chains or shoved a tracker on him or placed him and the Asgardians in the Hulk’s cage, though in Loki’s opinion, each of those would have been a valid reaction to the severe lies Loki had been using to create a human persona while on Earth.

He placed his order and waited at the end of the bar for the takeaway cups, glad he’d been able to put a fresh suit on before the debrief on the helicarrier. He wasn’t paying much attention as the barista worked on his and Tony’s drinks but he did lift his head as he heard a man grumble, “’Hey, Loki, we need you’? What kind of receipt is this?”

Frowning, he walked up to the man, “Excuse me, sir. Can I see that receipt?” The man rolled his eyes and offered it over, Loki’s name and ‘we need you’ filling all of the printed sections of the receipt in various fonts and sizes. “Oh dear.”

“Americano and a mint hot chocolate for Loki!”

Grabbing the cardboard drinks container and shoving the receipt into his pocket Loki hurried from the building and teleported to the helicarrier bridge.

Alarms blared, Maria Hill had a bloody gash on her head, agents were struggling to get control of hacked systems from the snippets of conversation he could hear. “How the hell did everything go to shit?” Loki muttered, storing the drinks in a pocket dimension. “I was gone ten fucking minutes.”

“Laufeyson!” shouted Fury, firing a shot over his shoulder. Turning, Loki saw a man in black riot gear recoil. “Get down to section B7, the Hulk is active.”

Loki’s stomach churned. “Copy that.” He teleported away and was glad that the first thing he saw _wasn’t_ a very large green rage monster. Though the evidence of the Hulk’s destruction was plain. He broke into a run jumping over various bits of debris towards the sounds of roaring and the pounding of feet, watching with wide eyes as familiar red hair flipped over a banister, just barely out of the Hulk’s reach. “Natasha!”

Her gaze flickered to him but they didn’t have time for words before the Hulk was on her again, reaching up and wrenching on the walkway. Loki threw two throwing knives at the Hulk, shifting to his Jotun form. “I think you should pick on someone your own size, Doctor Banner.”

The combination of Natasha escaping and Loki verbally and physically assaulting him caused the Hulk to switch targets, which was great for Natasha, who climbed higher and disappeared from Loki’s sight, but was decidedly less great for Loki who barely got to register he was taller than the Hulk before a large green fist smashed into his face and sent him flying. A roar announced the Hulk wasn’t done, Loki picking himself up just in time to catch the Hulk’s leaping strike. He grit his teeth, knee to the ground trying to hold his own against the Hulk.

Putting all the strength he could into his other leg, Loki pushed getting himself out from under the Hulk’s blow and elbowed the green beast hard in the gut. The Hulk punched him again and grabbed Loki’s horn, the Jotun grabbing at the Hulk’s wrist, “No, no! Not that! Let. Go!” The Hulk roared in anger, throwing Loki away again, Loki’s frigid touch seeming to have burned the beast. Though not for long. The Hulk was already healing and raising a steel beam that must have come loose in the earlier scuffle.

The Hulk swung for Loki who winced, catching the beam on his shoulder and gripping it with both arms. “Doctor Banner, I would really appreciate it if you would calm down and come back to us,” Loki tried, already sending a wave of ice along the beam towards the Hulk’s hands. Both of them released the beam, Loki charging in, ice coating and elongating his fingertips into claws. He swiped while the Hulk’s torso was exposed only to be kicked bodily into a flight of stairs.

Grabbing Loki’s ankle, the Hulk threw Loki through a wall, leaving Loki breathless with half a hand rail in his horns. Coughing and picking himself up, Loki took the moment’s calm to detangle the metal, coating it in ice and warping it into a crude club. The Hulk charged only to strike an illusion, looking about in confusion and giving Loki the opening he needed to smash his club into the Hulk’s side, knocking him off balance, shattered ice coating the floor. Winding back, Loki planted a hard punch in the Hulk’s side and was rewarded by the beast stumbling back and tumbling to the floor. Leaping forward and grabbing onto the Hulk, Loki teleported them both to the Hulk’s cell.

Flagging, Loki summoned as much cold to his hands as he could hoping to hurt the Hulk enough to keep him still for the few seconds Loki needed to teleport out of the cell.

“Loki?” Turning his head, Loki saw Phil, the bodies of six unconscious mercenaries in the entryway.

“Phil! Get the release ready!” Loki shouted, crying out in pain as the Hulk punched Loki in the face then grabbed his head, squeezing until Loki could see coloured spots. Ice crystallised into spikes on Loki’s palms, both hands striking up into the Hulk’s hand and jumping to kick with both feet. His vision was blurred and ears ringing, Loki teleported the moment he felt the Hulk release him and hoped to hell he landed somewhere safe.

He must have blacked out for when Loki opened your eyes, he found Phil and Fury crouched beside him in concern. Shifting his head slightly, Loki saw the Hulk’s cage was gone. “You okay, Agent?” Fury asked.

Loki groaned, slowly rising to one elbow. “I don’t ever want to fight the Hulk again.” He felt like he’d been trampled, repeatedly. “Is everyone okay?”

“We lost some agents, but regained Barton. Stark got the broken turbine running again with Rogers’s help. Those Asgardians pack a punch,” Fury added, instinctively reaching out a hand to help Loki sit up.

“They’re still here?”

“Yeah, for now.” A beat passed before Fury added softly, “They accused you of causing the explosion that not only nearly took us out of the air, but released the Hulk.” Fury looked angry as he said it, but the tone wasn’t accusatory.

Smiling slightly, Loki said, “That would be entirely stupid of me.”

“Stupider than going into New York for coffee without a new coms unit?” Phil asked, offering a small black box to Loki.

“Well if I’d have known you can’t go ten minutes without literal explosions,” Loki smirked rolling his eyes and attempting to take the box only to cry out as something in his shoulder protested the action. He took the box with his other hand instead. “Thanks.”

“Let me take a look at your arm,” said Phil poking gently with his hand into Loki’s shoulder joint. “Dislocated. I’m not sure I’d trust myself to pop it back in when your arm is the size of my body though.”

“I’ll change back in a minute. None of the doorways are big enough anyway,” he teased, turning back to Fury who put a hand on his good shoulder. “Director?”

“Good job on the Hulk. I’m sure that took a lot of guts.” Standing, Fury looked between the two, “Once you can move come back to the meeting room above the bridge.” Loki and Phil dipped their heads in a sharp nod before Fury turned on his heel and walked off.

“Are you okay, Loki? You’re looking a little blue.”

Loki turned to find Phil failing miserably at fighting a grin. Laughter bubbling in his throat, Loki chuckled, “Dickhead.”

* * *

The two agents came into the meeting room with Loki’s arm in a sling and his face a lovely mess of bruises. Now back in his smaller As form, Loki had been able to put the coms unit in his ear but it also made the Hulk’s damage to his body more obvious, bruises that had been a darker blue in his Jotun skin showed up horribly on the paler skin tone.

“Loki!” called Tony, jumping up from his chair eyes wide, “Shit what happened to you?”

“The Hulk. He’s not very gentle,” Loki replied, smiling weakly at Tony as the man came closer, hovering as he examined Loki’s wounds. “I have your coffee still. Nice hack on the cash register by the way.”

Tony paused his swaying and head twisting to shoot Loki a smile, “Thanks. I knew you didn’t have your coms so I just hoped you were still there. But what d’you mean you still have the coffee?”

Slowly twisting the arm in the sling, Loki waved the other one over it to open his pocket dimension, releasing the stored drinks. “Wow! Wait, are they still hot? It’s been like an hour.” Tony took the drinks and popped them on the table, startling as Tony realised, yes, his coffee was still hot. “Sweet. You’re the best, Lokes.”

“Fighting Hulks and still finding time for coffee.” Loki winked at Tony, picking his hot chocolate out of the cardboard with a small amount of difficulty before dropping down in the seat beside Natasha and pushing the drink over to her. “I think you need it more than me,” he said in answer to her raised eyebrow.

“You have three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and a fracture in your left leg and _I_ need a drink?” she balked. “That’s not even commenting on your face.”

“It’s a face only a moron could love,” Loki quipped back, smiling at Natasha’s snort.

Tony flushed, biting his lip to halt a comment. Natasha allowed herself a small chuckle at that, taking the drink with a light shake of the head.

Captain Rogers was frowning, thinking deeply as Phil took a seat by him and Tony retook his own chair, conveniently next to Loki’s. The Asgardians looked no worse for wear but only Thor was seated, the warriors lingering by the window that overlooked the bridge, all talking lowly amongst themselves. Thor looked between Loki and the humans with something akin to distain.

“If you have something to say, Thor, then say it,” Loki called more bravely than he felt. “You look constipated.” His gaze flickered from Thor to Natasha who had nudged his arm, opening his mouth for the marshmallow in her fingers.

“What are you doing?” Thor sneered. “Why are you even on this planet, Loki?”

“I felt like a change of scenery I guess?” Loki said, considering the question. “Býleistr got coronated and I’d spent the odd few days on Earth over the decades. I didn’t want to be seen to get in his way, so eight years ago I spoke to my brothers and they agreed a few years here might be nice.”

“Do you go back to the winter wonderland at all?” asked Tony, slouching in his chair.

“Yes, I took a month’s leave last year when I told you my Father was ill.”

Natasha offered Loki another marshmallow. “I gather it wasn’t as bad as you made out?”

“No,” Loki admitted with a sigh, “My Father is perfectly well, but it was needed. I ended up in court for a week.”

Thor narrowed his gaze, “What did you do?”

“Do you mind not accusing him?” Tony shot. “If you do the math, that’s still seven years here, not there.”

“If he was in court, he must have done something to end up there,” Thor argued.

Tony sneered, “You’re an ass. Aren’t you supposed to have faith in your family, blood or adopted?”

“I was in court,” Loki interrupted loudly, cutting Thor off from replying, “Because the nobility were asking Býleistr to have me sneak into Asgard and steal back the casket. I said no for the record.” He glanced to Tony, “I think it would be worth having this argument later.”

“I’m not letting him take you anywhere,” said Tony firmly.

“Neither are we,” Phil added.

“Yeah, it’s your turn to buy drinks,” said Natasha. “And I think Clint and I need at least six shots.”

Loki rolled his eyes with a smirk, “You realise if I get suspended for aliens or have to pay for the Hulk’s damage I can’t afford drinks?”

“Aren’t you dating a millionaire or something? They can foot it,” said Natasha.

“I heard it was a billionaire,” Phil grinned.

Rogers’s eyebrows pulled tight together, “How is ‘aliens’ a valid reason for suspension?”

Tony rubbed his forehead. “I don’t even know which one of you to strangle.”

“ _No one_ is strangling anyone,” Fury called, entering the room with Hill on his trenchcoat tails. “And if we could all _focus_ on the task at hand for a minute I would be grateful. Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there is a hole in my helicarrier, an intergalactic nutjob is running around with the Tesseract – the location of which is still unknown by the way – Doctor Banner has fallen to Earth and his situation is currently either dead or at least not the Hulk and two of my best agents would look better if I’d been rubbing them on a cheese grater for the last hour.” He turned to look at Loki, “You were _not_ that bruised when you were blue.”

Loki offered a shrug. It wasn’t as though Fury didn’t know how skin tones worked.

Fury circled the table, slipping into a vacant spot, “Stark, anything on the tracker before the explosion?”

“It had narrowed the field down to New York State. Does that agent you regained know anything?”

“Barton?” said Natasha, her head poking up. “I heard he was still unconscious.”

“He’s awake but in confinement until we can verify the mind control is gone,” Fury explained. “Is that in your skillset, Laufeyson?”

Loki shrugged his good shoulder, “About the same as anyone else’s I’d reckon. Agent Romanoff knows him better than me anyway, she’d be better at assessing him.”

“That and Loki has a concussion,” Natasha added.

“I’d like to see you take as many punches to the face as I did. I’m just glad I still have all my teeth.”

“Romanoff, go check on Barton. Laufeyson- bitch will you stop twitching?” Fury cut himself off to glare at Thor. “He’s not Voldemort.” Shaking his head, Fury turned back to Loki. “Laufeyson, can you use your magic to track the Tesseract?”

“No.”

“Then you and Stark try get the lab back together so the tracker can hopefully pick up where it left off. Hill, see if you can’t get our scanners working and find Banner. Rogers, I want you and Coulson keeping an eye on our friends from Asgard. You can explain the situation as they need. It’s looking like we might need all the help we can get.”

“Why do you trust Loki so easily?” asked Thor as people moved to stand and go about their tasks.

Fury levelled Thor with a stare, “It’s my job to be paranoid and distrustful of people. Many lives rely on my ability to analyse a person in a single moment. Do you think I would intentionally hire people I found untrustworthy?”

“Loki lied to you though.”

“We all have secrets,” said Fury pointing around the room, “I have them, they have them, you probably have some too. When Loki lies to me, I may not always know the truth, but I trust that his lies aren’t there to put someone in danger. He’s earned my trust and protected my people more times than I care to count. He is a valuable asset to SHIELD and to Earth and now that I know he has more to offer, I hope he’ll consider staying on Earth and giving his all.” He turned to sweep his gaze over the agents and Avengers. “Don’t you people have tasks to complete?”

Various apologies sounded as Natasha, Hill, Loki and Tony left the room. Once the door was closed, Fury turned back to Thor, “What I want to know is why you, his supposed _brother_ are so incredibly _dis_ trustful of Loki?”

“ _Loki is the God of Lies_ ,” echoed Thor’s voice from Tony’s phone speaker as they walked down the hall.

Hill rolled her eyes, “Could you stop bugging our ship, Stark?”

“Stop making it so easy,” Tony quipped back, “And shhh. I wanna hear this.” Shaking her head, Hill took a sharp right and headed down to the bridge.

“Thor does know you kind of suck at lying right?” Natasha asked Loki softly as the three walked down the hall.

“It’s a coming of age thing in Asgard, at five hundred we are given godly designations, they’re meant to highlight ones strengths but almost uniformly, women receive loyalty or fertility and men get various warrior traits. Thor was named God of Thunder but was actually scared of thunderstorms for several hundred years.”

“Did your other Pop know?” asked Tony.

“Of course Odin did, Thor used to run to his and Frigga’s room until Odin decided he was too old to be sleeping with his parents. Then he’d sneak into my bed,” Loki shrugged.

“All of their arguments are just… they sound like school kids chatting shit in the quad,” said Tony shaking his head as he listened to Thor speak with occasional interjections from the warriors. “And Thor says you were all friends? Seriously?”

Loki shook his head. “The warriors that came with him are Thor’s friends. I can’t recall raising my voice to any of them before yesterday.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow, “Not your friends?”

“Not in the least. They were all loud and boorish, constantly going on quests and getting into trouble. I was dragged along and usually had to get them out of it. You can keep listening, but I’m going to start shifting debris in the lab.” His leg fracture made it painful to walk, so Loki was reduced to an indignant limp, passing through the lab doorway to find the room in shambles. The floor had collapsed at the rear. Looking down, Loki could see the area the Hulk and Natasha had been in before he’d joined them. They must have come down to the lab for an update after Loki left.

Kneeling down, Loki shifted until he found a position that didn’t make his injured leg burn and started his assessment of the hole. He could stabilise it with magic and as far as he could see the machines the tracker had been working on hadn’t fallen down, though they were definitely damaged. Whether that’s because the alien had been aiming for the tracker or Doctor Banner intentionally however, was unclear.

“I don’t think I like your brother,” Tony said, coming in several minutes later with a scowl that made the lines on his forehead more prominent.

“Thor?” Loki asked lightly. “It’s not exactly his fault he thinks the way he does.”

“He’s arguing the angle that you having magic and hiding it is a cause to distrust you,” Tony said making a beeline for the only machine with a working screen. “The dude shoots lightning from a hammer and _you’re_ the odd one out? Also I’m not certain but I think that Sif lady and one of the others are suggesting you knowing your true heritage makes you the asshole. But I’m not seeing it.”

“Then I thank you for your trust.” He kept his tone neutral, but it did actually mean a lot to Loki that hearing whatever unpleasantness was coming out of Thor and the warriors’s mouths wasn’t impacting Tony’s view of Loki. “As to the magic, it’s inherent in all Jotun but quite unusual in Ǽsir. As I see it, Odin was simply upset that making me look like part of the family wasn’t enough to _make_ me a true Asgardian. I am a failure in his eyes. Which, if you look at my childhood from that perspective, a lot of things make sense. Thor was praised for typical Ǽsir behaviour and aspirations, like being battle thirsty and straightforward. I was criticised and ridiculed for taking to magic and books, for not wanting to fight with swords and spears but daggers and illusions. I learned to lie and bend the truth so that I would get in less trouble when I was caught somewhere I should not be.” Putting his fingertips to the floor, Loki carefully manipulated spun tendrils of ice to cover the distance of the hole. He had faith a sheet of it would hold but it would look better if it had clear structural support.

A dull thud from behind alerted Loki to Tony sitting down before the engineer’s hands looped around him and the man’s head rested on the back of his shoulder. “You had a Howard too huh?”

Easing his arm out of the sling, Loki shifted so he and Tony were face to face before pulling him into a hug. “They may have raised me in Asgard, but I found my home. It’s here, with you, and I would never have come here if it weren’t for them treating me differently.”

“If we find the Tesseract and give it to them, will they let you stay?”

Loki tensed, “What happened to not letting them take me?”

“I’m not but… if all Asgardians are as strong as them and they send reinforcements…” Tony drifted off, hands fisting into Loki’s suit jacket. “I’m worried. Don’t get me wrong, I’d do whatever I could to stop them but I just… don’t think I can win.” His voice broke at the admittance, Loki’s hand coming up to card through Tony’s hair.

“One battle at a time. This bastard and the Tesseract, then Asgard and whatever rights they think they have to me. Which are none,” he said firmly. “Is the search running again?”

“Yeah, it’ll take about thirty minutes, give or take.” He pulled back to look Loki over. “Are you really okay?”

“Physically I’ll heal up in a few weeks at most, the Hulk didn’t do that much damage. Emotionally… well. I’ll just be happy when Thor and the others are gone and Director Fury has had his fill of alien Q and A.”

Tony nodded, looked over Loki’s shoulder at the hole he was repairing. “That could wait then while you nap. You look like you could use a little shut eye.”

“I’m fine, just a little mentally exhausted from the teleporting. Precisely relocating myself in a moving vehicle is complex under normal circumstances, with a Hulk. Well,” Loki sighed, reaching up to rub at his face and wincing as he pressed on the bruises there. “Besides, I’ll get antsy just sitting around while you work so it’s better than nothing.”

Tony hummed, curling up with hands around his knees while Loki went back to the hole, watching as the ice spread carefully. “I really don’t get Asgard’s magic problem. The functionality of it has to outweigh any perceived negatives. And it’s pretty.”

Loki scoffed lightly, “My ice is pretty?”

“Yeah, it’s got that little green tint to it like your magic and your eyes in this form. It’s like looking at the sea in Italy. Mom took me there sometimes while Howard was working out of town. The water was really clear. I used to try make underwater cities with piles of sand and stones,” Tony smiled to himself, getting up to check on the computer’s progress.

“We should go sometime. I’m sure saving the world earns me time off in lieu.”

“Yeah, or we could check out these Nine Realm things Odin thinks humans are too stupid to know about?” Tony’s tone was light, but Loki knew when he was dancing around a topic. Sometimes Tony was frank with what he wanted to know, but often, he waited or poked someone towards giving him the information. Not entirely sure what Tony was getting at, Loki waited for the other questions to fly. “Is your dad actually okay? I know before you said he was ill but that was just to cover up the fact he lives on another planet right?”

“My father is getting old, mostly,” Loki shrugged. “He has old scars from his fight with Odin and other battles in the war. In the last two hundred years they’ve started causing him difficulty moving, but it’s nothing major yet. He’s passed kingly duties onto my oldest brother but still sits on meetings and helps delegate resources when Bỳ can’t work it out. His movement will probably get worse as time goes on, and while I don’t mind you or SHIELD knowing, as far as Asgard should know, my Father is in perfect health and Býleistr is an excellent king.”

“Can’t be seen to be weak huh?”

“Pretty much,” Loki shrugged. “The peace between both realms is rocky at best and I’m sure now Asgard has found me more problems will arise.”

* * *

When they figured out the location of the Tesseract, Loki was ordered to stay on the helicarrier. He hadn’t mind at the time, and wished the Avengers (but not the Asgardians) to be safe before retiring to the med bay for a nap. His earpiece was still in and he wasn’t overly surprised when he was woken by Fury’s voice asking him to come to the bridge.

“Director,” he greeted, turning his gaze to the screens showing the Avengers and their mission situation. There was a portal above Stark Tower, with aliens pouring out of it on speeders of sorts. Infantry, Loki noted watching as the portal slowly gained is size, likely in anticipation of a larger vessel bearing warriors.

“Any idea what these are?” Fury asked without turning.

“No, they aren’t a race I’m familiar with, which means they are probably from further out. Andromeda possibly.”

“That far?” Fury turned now, concern evident in the crease of his brow. “I’ll deal with those implications later. Stark Tower has been compromised, the Tesseract is opening a portal from the roof and those aliens are all over New York. I need you to scour the Hulk’s crash site and find Banner.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Loki asked.

“Well, it can’t be worse.” Fury gestured to one of his screens. “Banner should be there on the eastern side of Colorado. Get your asses to New York.”

“Copy that,” Loki nodded, taking a moment to read the coordinates then teleported away.

When he reappeared he saw the destroyed cage and a naked Bruce Banner not far from it. The doctor was awake but clearly lost and startled, catching movement from his peripherals and spotting Loki, who quickly raised both hands to show he was unarmed, the motion pulling at his aching shoulder joint and making him grimace. “I’m not here to fight, Doctor Banner,” he called, resting his injured arm back in its sling while slowly approaching.

“Then what are you here for?” Banner challenged.

Loki’s good arm reached into a pocket dimension, pulling dark fabric from it. “To offer you pants?” he tried, offering the trousers to Banner. Banner’s eyes flickered all over Loki, taking in his injuries and his posture, assessing threat level while Loki pointedly kept his own eyes on Banner’s face.

“Did the other guy do that to you?” Banner asked, taking the pants with one hand and gesturing to Loki with the other.

“Yes, but, I don’t blame you. Or him,” Loki shrugged. “I’m afraid though we may still need your help, Doctor.”

Banner turned and stood, pulling the trousers on, “Why’s that? Did the tracker not work? I’m sure Tony can fix that.”

“Tony’s currently fighting an alien invasion in New York.” Loki’s voice is tight as he added, “Doctor Banner, I need you to come with me to New York. We need the Hulk.”

Banner swallowed, turning back to Loki. “What if he hurts humans? If he can hurt you like that, he can definitely kill people.”

“It’s a risk SHIELD is willing to take.”

“And you? What if it’s Tony the other guy smashes?”

Loki’s lips twitched into a smile, “Then I’ll kick you back towards the aliens and have a strict no-Hulks policy for the victory dinner.” Banner laughed humourlessly seeming equal parts amused and dismayed. “And anyway. He’s Iron Man and I’m an alien spy. One of us is always going to get hurt. We have an agreement about that.”

“An agreement?”

“Mhmm, little things to help keep us both sane,” Loki nodded. “Especially because we’re working together now and apparently we did a terrible job hiding our relationship from SHIELD,” he chuckled before sighing, “At least Thor seems not to have worked it out.”

“Then no offense, but he’s an idiot.”

Loki laughed, “Yes, yes he is. But we’ll deal with that later. Now as much as I just said that I trust Tony, I am also very hyper aware that an alien might be trying to kill him and would like to go to New York as soon as possible. Are you coming?” He held his hand out to Banner who nodded, reaching out and taking the offered hand.

“I don’t think I’m getting over the teleporting thing,” Banner said when he let go of Loki and looked around New York’s main street. The street was in shambles, creatures flew through the air, bolts of energy shooting from their guns and flying crafts. People were screaming and fleeing the streets.

Putting a hand to his ear Loki said, “Director, I have Banner. Can you switch me to the Avenger’s frequency so we can rendezvous?”

“ _Hey, Lokester! Joining the party?_ ” Tony’s chipper voice called. “ _Head towards 5 th._”

Loki jerked his head. “Party is this way, Doctor Banner.”

“Bruce is fine,” Banner said jogging after Loki. Soon they could see the familiar silhouettes of Natasha, Clint and Rogers. “Hey, someone mentioned a party?” Bruce called earning smiles from the others.

“It’s good to see you, Banner,” Rogers greeted. “Are you sure you should be here, Loki?”

Loki shrugged, removing the sling and stretching his arm slowly. “Well I’m here now. Let’s just all try not to die?”

“ _Party’s here!_ ” Tony called rounding a corner, followed by the biggest, ugliest armoured alien whale Loki had ever seen. It was the only armoured alien whale Loki had seen, but it was still the ugliest.

Natasha shook her head. “That… I don’t see how that’s a party.”

Rogers looked to Loki and Banner. “We could use one of you getting big.”

“I got this,” Banner smiled, striding towards the leviathan with a chilling amount of calm. For once, no one was upset to see Banner turn green.

With a single, terrifying punch, the Hulk stopped the leviathan in its tracks. Taking his chance, Tony fired a barrage of weapons into the leviathan as its armour pieces jarred against each other and bowed, exposing soft underbelly and showering the ground in puss and alien blood.

“Sexy,” commented Clint, lip curling as he examined the floor. “You got a cool suit too, Loki?”

“Nah.” Loki grinned, “Just blue with horns.”

Tony landed beside them, the metal armour clunking loudly on the cement. “Hey, I think the blue is cool!”

“Technically you’re obligated to,” Loki shot with a cheeky smirk. He reached up, yanking his tie looser and undid the first two buttons of his shirt before summoning two daggers from his pocket dimension. Around them the alien invaders roared their displeasure, looking down on the gathered defenders of Earth. Hulk roared back as he looked around, decidedly more aware than he had seemed on the helicarrier.

Rogers took point. “Iron Man, I need you to make a perimeter, anything gets more than five miles out you turn it back or you turn it to ash. Hawkeye, I need you up top calling out formations and tactics. The rest of us will split up and take sections of the city and Hulk,” he hesitated a second as the green man looked to find Rogers pointing at him. “Smash.”

That seemed to please the Hulk for he grinned and leapt high into the air, smashing his hand into the face of an alien on the side of a building some thirty floors up.

“Stark, can I get a lift?” asked Clint.

“Better clench up, Legolas.”

“I don’t know what’s going on with the Asgardians, but they seem to have the north side,” Rogers said, heading south. “Widow, I want you on the west side, Loki, east. Evacuate anyone you come across and kill any of the aliens. This isn’t the time for prisoners.”

“ _So, why no blue, Loki_?”

“Is this really the time, Barton?”

“ _I’m doing my job,_ ” The archer argued. “ _Stark, there’s a cluster of them two streets north, take them down 3 rd, they can’t handle tight corners._”

“ _Copy. I see them._ ”

Loki rolled his eyes, “The Asgardians don’t like the blue skin and I’m not interested in friendly fire.” He jumped from the bridge he was on to stab his knives into the back of one of the invaders. “Do you see the one who caused this?”

“ _Nope, but I’d assume he’s somewhere in the chaos. He was on Stark Tower ‘til Stark evicted him._ ”

“ _Where’s your codename anyway, Loki_?” asked Tony. “ _Or did no one run it by Cap_?”

“It’s Shadow Cobra,” Loki supplied with a roll of his eyes.

“ _’Cause his hair looks like Shadow the Hedgehog._ ” Clint supplied his grin audible. “ _Cap, there’s a bunch of police down 23 rd. They might be able to help with the perimeter?_”

“ _On it_ ,” Rogers replied. “ _And if you guys could maybe take this a little more seriously_?”

Unanimously, the three replied, “Spoil sport.”

They struggled on for what felt like hours, following Clint’s shouts to overwhelmed areas, occasionally helping each other as they came across battles and worked surprisingly in sync for their first mission. As Loki and Fandral fought back to back against a group of the aliens, Loki heard the good news from Natasha over his coms.

“ _I can close the portal. Does anyone copy?_ ”

“ _Great, get it closed_ ,” ordered Rogers.

Followed by the worst possible news from Tony, “ _Hold it. We’ve a nuke in coming._ ”

“A nuke?!” Loki spluttered, eyes wide.

“What’s a nuke?” asked Fandral stabbing his opponent and swiftly moving onto the next while Loki kicked an explosive into the air. It detonated, smashing the glass of the buildings around them and showering the two aliens in shrapnel.

“Like that but the whole island we’re on will be blown up.”

Fandral’s face paled, “That’s not good.”

Loki couldn’t agree more.

“ _I’m heading out to it now, I should be able to reroute it through the portal_ ,” Tony said, his voice unwavering.

Loki’s heart clenched, his blood like ice in his veins. He swallowed, “Be careful, we don’t know where that portal leads.” He refused to point out that nuclear devices were very unstable and that trying to change the course of a missile mid-flight was a terrible idea, nor would he tell Tony to stop. It was dangerous, but they weren’t left many options and though Tony was worth more to Loki than the entirety of Manhattan, that selfishness had no place here. “And if you don’t come back I’ll drag you back and throttle you.”

“ _Heh. Thanks._ ”

While Loki dispatched another of the invading aliens with more violence than strictly necessary, he noticed the occasional noise from his coms of the other Avengers fighting had dropped out but didn’t remark on it until he heard JARVIS.

“ _Line secure, sir._ ”

“You switched us to a private channel?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” answered Tony softly. “ _Can you talk_?”

There were still a lot of aliens around but Loki had no intention of telling Tony no. “Of course.” He delivered a round house to one of the aliens, knocking it into another.

“ _Good, ‘cause… I’m not sure how this is gonna go._ ” Loki could hear the sadness tinting Tony’s voice as he continued, “ _And, seriously, thank you for not telling me not to do this. I know you wanna._ ”

“I know it needs to be done as well and you’re the only one who can do it with any amount of safety,” Loki replied, his throat tight. “I’ll be right here when you’ve finished.”

“ _If this doesn’t work, if I don’t come back_ -.”

“Then I will use the Tesseract and drag your hide back to Earth,” Loki told him firmly. Tony sniffled and didn’t even ask if that was possible. Above, Loki caught sight of Tony’s suit flying for the portal.

When Tony spoke again, his voice was very quiet. “ _Loki. If I die… I love you._ ”

“I love you too,” Loki replied without hesitation. The aliens around them were dead allowing Loki to direct his attention to the sky. “Tony?” He couldn’t see the flash of red from the suit anymore. “Tony!” he cried when Tony didn’t answer.

There was no word from Tony as the light from a large series of explosions could be seen on the other side of the portal. As the light grew closer to their side the portal suddenly cut out and for a second Loki swore his heart stopped beating altogether. “TONY!”

He scoured the sky, trying to find any sign that Tony was in the air, Loki’s fingers changing the channel of his earpiece until he could hear the other Avengers again.

“ _-Falling too fast._ ”

“Can you see Tony?” Loki asked, barely able to hear Rogers over his own panic.

Clint sounded as though he was running, his breathing harsh as he ordered, “ _Loki, get to 2 nd street!_”

He didn’t ask for a reason and ran off, leaving a confused Fandral behind. Around him, Loki half-registered the bodies of the invading aliens collapsed all over the place, many clearly not injured. The mother ship must have been the other side of the portal acting as a hub connection, without it the creatures were cut off from their power source essentially.

Rounding the corner, Loki was just in time to see Tony’s Iron Man suit falling head first towards the ground before a flash of green caught the man. It wasn’t the green of Loki’s magic however, it was the Hulk. The Hulk dropped down with as much grace as the man seemed to possess, laying Tony on the ground by Rogers. Running faster, Loki made it to the three just as Rogers had forced the faceplate from Tony’s head. “Tony!”

He fell to his knees beside the armour, noting the faint glow of the arc reactor and Tony’s closed eyes. Had he passed out? Was the suit even working? Tears prickled at his eyes as Tony didn’t react and Loki began to fear the worst.

Something shifted beside them and Loki didn’t realise it was the Hulk until the green man was literally screaming in Tony’s face, scaring Loki half to death. More importantly though, it scared Tony back to life, the man startling, eyes shooting open with a shout of his own.

“Tony!”

Tony’s gaze found his. “Loki!” Shuddering with relief, Loki’s vision blurred with tears. “Hey,” Tony soothed. “What’cha crying for? You’re only meant to do that for dead people.” An armoured hand found his and squeezed tightly. “Hey, you ever had schwarma?”

“I think I might bloody well kill you,” Loki grinned despite the sob he let out, tears rolling down his cheeks. He wiped his face with the back of his sleeve, sniffling slightly as Tony slowly sat up.

“Is the moment gone?” Tony asked.

“Oh royally,” Clint replied, dropping to one knee and wrapping an arm around Loki’s neck. “In fact, you messed up so badly we’re revoking your boyfriend card.”

“Nooooo! Mine, my Loki!” Tony complained childishly, letting go of Loki’s hand to flap his hand at Clint. Snorting, Loki doubled over with chuckles.


	5. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, work was pretty busy last week, so I wasn't able to get as much writing done.
> 
> Also apologies for taking liberties with how All-Speak works.

Loki had been taken aback when Thor and the warriors left with just their prisoner and the Tesseract, leaving Loki behind. Though Loki wasn’t holding his breath that Thor wouldn’t return now that he knew where to find him.

A week after the invasion, Fury summoned the Avengers together once more, where they learned Tony had come to an agreement with SHIELD to redesign sections of his tower so that the super-powered heroes could live together, ready to defend Earth in a crisis.

“It’s about Banner really though, isn’t it?” Tony asked Loki quietly as they walked through the hellicarrier halls towards the hanger bay.

“Basically, yes,” Loki admitted. “If a bunch of superheroes are watching, the WSC will be less inclined to hunt Bruce down. The fact SHIELD was able to pick his cage to be a sweet shop of technology is a great boon. Especially if you’re alright with slimy spies in your vents.”

Tony shrugged easily, “Well I’m fine with one in my bed. If Widow and Hawkeye want to clean my vents with their bodies, more power to them. I’ll just tighten my security.” Pausing at the door, Tony watched as Loki inputted his security password. “So what’s going on with you anyway?”

“How so?”

“Well, I didn’t see your name on my list of Avengers to build rooms for.”

“Ah, I’m not actually on the initiative,” Loki clarified. “Before this mess I was just an agent with a good record. Same for Barton and Romanoff.”

“And yet they’re hanging out in my clubhouse and didn’t invite you.” He frowned, flapping a hand, “I- basically what I’m trying to ask is do you want to move in? With me. At the Tower. Or Malibu? Since the Tower isn’t ready for living in yet.”

Loki blinked owlishly, then stared at Tony in silence for a moment. “I…”

“It’s cool if you don’t,” Tony assured, holding his hands up, “I just thought it would be kinda shitty to hang out and then have to kick you out. And okay, maybe somewhere along the line Fury might get mad about it, but I can deal with that. You’ve stayed over for a few days before and they didn’t care so I’m struggling to see why they’d mind if it was permanent. But then maybe you’ve got this whole off-duty persona built up and a set routine that I’m unintentionally shattering by asking you to basically be on your guard but like don’t be on your guard, because it’s my house and I wouldn’t intentionally attack you or let anyone in the building do that?”

“N-no, it… it isn’t that,” Loki said once Tony had stopped talking. “I was just… surprised.”

“How come?”

“Uhm, well. I… I just thought you might want more time. To accept the alien thing and rationalise if you _did_ in fact want that back in your bed.” Loki twisted a stretch of skin between his thumb and index finger. “For the record, I don’t really have a routine. I go back to my apartment, I cook whatever meal it is and I sleep. Sometimes I shove a DVD on.”

“That is… woefully unimpressive,” Tony told him with a serious look. “And I’m fine. Possibly not with aliens as a collective,” he allowed, “because that’s a big thing that needs unpacking, but you are one alien. My alien. And it would admittedly be a lot easier to unpack and understand you if I can see what horrific taste you have in DVDs and sleepwear. Ow,” he rubbed his arm where Loki had thumped him gently, grinning.

Shaking his head, Loki smiled widely back. “I guess I’ll go pack then. The rent is two month’s notice, but I was thinking I could keep it on as a hideout if needed. I believe Clint and Natasha intend on doing the same with their residences.”

“Sounds good,” Tony nodded. “I’m assuming you’re going to teleport in, so just give me a five minute warning call so I’m not gonna electrocute myself or cut a finger off if you suddenly appear while I’m zoned out.”

Loki rolled his eyes, “You aren’t _that_ accident prone.” He took a couple of steps back and waved a hand. “I’ll call later.”

Tony returned the wave then slipped into his jet.

* * *

Their first night together in Malibu with Loki as a permanent resident was fine, similar to the times where Loki would stay over when he had time off from SHIELD. Tony was in the workshop until four a.m., stirring Loki as he slipped into the bed, but not fully waking him. A few nights later however, they were sleeping, with Loki vaguely aware that Tony was moving, but he thought little of it until Tony cried out, yanking the cover from Loki as he moved.

Eyes shooting open, Loki took a second to figure out what had happened. Tony was sat up, a hand fisted in the bedsheet. The lights were still off. “JARVIS, low lights,” he croaked, voice raspy from sleep. Pushing up on one arm as the dim floor-level LEDs lit up the room so he could better see Tony, now noticing the human was trembling, Loki put his hand on Tony’s upper arm, “…Tony?”

At his touch, Tony startled violently, shifting away and holding himself close, head snapping to Loki. It took long seconds before comprehension dawned in Tony’s expression and the tension fell out of his shoulders, a hand covering his face as he turned away.

“Nightmare?” Loki asked sitting up properly. He knew Tony had them occasionally, Afghanistan still had some raw edges to it for him, particularly memories of the open heart surgery, but they weren’t overly frequent.

Tony’s head bobbed, the man sniffing slightly as he took deep breaths through his nose and trying to get himself under control.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tony shook his head. “Can I touch you?” Another sniffle. The hand Tony wasn’t covering his eyes with reached out to Loki, the Jotun taking it in both his own, Tony squeezing tightly.

Slowly, they shifted so Loki was sat up leaning against the headboard with Tony curled up against his chest, Loki’s arms holding him gently. Tony still wasn’t talking much, but he seemed calmer and Loki knew better than to press.

“I’m sorry,” Tony mumbled into his collar a while later. Loki’s head twitched. He thought Tony had fallen asleep.

“What for?”

“For waking you up. For having a stupid nightmare about stupid space.”

Ducking his head and twisting his neck, Loki tried to catch Tony’s gaze. “A few less hours sleep will not kill me. It’s okay,” he soothed, rubbing his hand up and down Tony’s arm. “Do you want to tell me about space?”

“You probably already know everything about space,” Tony shot back, an odd tone to his voice Loki didn’t recognise.

“I don’t know everything,” he replied mildly. “Your stars for example. They look very strange to me.”

“Do you have constellations?”

Loki hummed, “Asgard’s are different from Jotunheim’s, but I don’t know most of the names for the ones on Asgard. I learned Jotunheim’s because Helblindi liked viewing the stars and that was one activity he didn’t mind sharing with me.”

“Like a sibling bonding thing.” Tony nodded. “Aunt Peggy taught me Earth’s.” He was quiet again for a couple of minutes before asking, “How do you get from planet to planet? You don’t use that light beam thing like Thor did right?”

“I use the gaps in the magic that binds the nine realms. Sorcerers call it branch walking on Yggdrasil, but… well I suppose it is scientifically more similar to a wormhole,” Loki replied. “They are stable and well hidden, so it’s unlikely anyone will stumble upon them,” he added soothingly when he felt Tony tense up again.

“H-how does it feel? Using those portals?”

“Cold, I suppose,” Loki acknowledged, tipping his head up to look at the ceiling as he thought on the question, idly stroking Tony’s arm. “It makes my heart race, especially if it’s a crack I haven’t been through before. When I first went to Jotunheim I didn’t know where on Jotunheim I’d ended up or if there would be people there. There’s one in Asgard’s treasure vault, and I do worry that if I ever used it I’d end up doing so at the same time the guards are on patrol.”

“It’s bright too,” Loki continued. “A lot of them are hidden away in dark places, and as you reach it, the energy prickles at your being, makes your hair stand on end, then it’s bright, and cold and suddenly you’re on another plane of existence.”

Tony swallowed thickly. “So there’s none that just… drop you in space itself?”

“In the vacuum where most species cannot breathe? Yes and no. It’s called the void on Asgard,” Loki said, getting an inkling for what had caused Tony’s nightmare. “Asgard is flat planet that one can literally fall off into the void from. It’s thought if that happens, the only thing waiting there is death.”

“You said most species,” Tony frowned, looking up with pursed lips. “Some can breathe in space?”

Loki shrugged, “I don’t know any personally, but I am unwilling to believe it’s impossible.”

“Could you?”

“I do not know. And you’ll have to forgive me for being unwilling to test that theory.”

Tony shifted, pulling at the bedsheet before slipping an arm around Loki’s waist.

“Do you want to lay down?” Loki guessed.

“You can if you want. I think I’m done with sleep,” Tony answered.

He shook his head, “I’m fine here.” That answer seemed to please Tony, who pressed a little harder against him.

* * *

The space-based nightmares weren’t as infrequent as the ones about Afghanistan. Loki wasn’t sure if one event was scarier than the other, or if it was simply that one was fresher than the other, but increasingly he found Tony dodging sleep by focusing his time and energy into working on his suits.

Not sure what to do, Loki had decided to leave the matter in Tony’s hands. He offered comfort when the man awoke from less than pleasant dreams and listened when Tony wanted to talk, his concern steadily rising after the first few times Tony had excused himself to the workshop and pushed for Loki to go back to bed following waking from another nightmare.

“What do you think, JARVIS?” Loki asked one day. He’d come back from SHIELD mission an hour prior to find that not only had Tony spent all day in the workshop, he was thoroughly convinced it was still Thursday. Loki had left for his mission Thursday, today was in fact Monday.

“ _About what exactly, sir_?” the AI asked innocently.

Loki cocked an eyebrow, taking a moment to check the recipe he was following. “Tony.”

“ _Again, I’m afraid you will have to be more specific, sir._ ”

“Have a lot of thoughts about him do you?” Loki asked with a smirk.

“ _None as fanciful as your own, I’m sure._ ”

That drew a laugh from Loki. “I should hope not. Fanciful situations with Tony should be exclusively my domain, JARVIS. I however, was referring to the increased activity and lack of sleep.”

JARVIS hummed, “ _I am concerned, truth be told. Increased work hours and sleeping less are not unusual for Mr Stark, however such activity is rarely for extended periods_.”

“Does he talk to you? About the nightmares?”

“ _No_ ,” JARVIS replied after a moment. “ _I have tried to broach the subject, but Mr Stark is disinclined to… discussing his feelings. Or admitting he might benefit from speaking with a therapist._ ”

Loki chopped ingredients for a moment, mulling his words over. “Is that your professional opinion?”

“ _I am an interface made by a man with Engineering PhDs. Not Psychology degrees_ ,” JARVIS said without inflection, his way of talking snappily, since JARVIS was mostly incapable of anger. “ _When Mr Stark returned from Afghanistan, he was quick to find a goal to focus on. I don’t think he necessarily moved on, but taking action against the Ten Rings allowed him to deal with his emotions in a way that suited him_.”

“I suppose it is rather hard to deal with space without going back,” Loki acknowledged, nodding.

“Yeah, I could do without Star Trekking across the universe,” commented Tony from the doorway.

Loki looked up. “Oh. Testing your suits inside now?”

“Well, I like to test the placement of crotch pieces, ya know?” To emphasise, Tony squatted, wiggling and gyrating. Chuckling, Loki went back to his prep. “What are we having?”

“Jambalaya.”

“Broccoli doesn’t belong in jambalaya.”

“I like broccoli,” Loki frowned.

“Weirdo.” Tony walked behind him and leant so he was pressed flush against Loki’s back, head on his shoulder. “I’m fine you know.”

Loki tipped his head against the helmet. “Forgive me if I don’t quite believe you. JARVIS says you haven’t slept in thirty-one hours.”

A sigh crackled through the armour’s speakers. “That’s… not wrong. I…” Tony drifted off as he thought his words over. “I‘ve been busy.”

“Mhmm, I can see,” Loki. “That was a fifty on the arm wasn’t it?”

“The X is in front. That makes it forty. Mark Forty-Two.”

Loki nodded, “I see. Why do you do that anyway? The roman numerals?” he asked slipping from Tony’s grip to move on with cooking their dinner before his human starved any further. “I was reading up on import laws and the classification of military weapons is done primarily with SKUs baring roman numerals.”

Tony shrugged. “Habit mostly, from the weapon days. Also what is wrong with SHIELD training regimes that has you reading up on _import law_ but not mastering roman numbers?”

Chuckling, Loki replied, “From my understanding most agents have archaic skills. Phil can read Elder Futhark and Old Germanic to a university level and Natasha can read just about every programming language ever used.”

“Huh, so that’s why she insisted her tablet had to run on Linux,” Tony mused. “Futhark is Old Norse right? Do you speak it?”

“Yes and no. I have an internal translator called All-Speak. Other alien species can use biometric chips to achieve the same outcome, but I and most Asgardians have had our neural pathways around the language centre of the brain altered.” He cast a reassuring smile over his shoulder at Tony. “In short when you speak to me I hear it in my native tongue and when I speak to you, you hear it in yours.”

Tony tilted his head to the side. “You hear me in Jotun?”

“No,” Loki lamented. “I had to learn the hard way to speak the language Jotnar use, apparently the translation isn’t word for word so occasionally I used out-dated vernacular that grated on the ears and took meaning from my speech.”

Tony nodded, “You do. It’s part of your charm.”

Loki scoffed, giving the pan one last stir before leaving it to simmer. “Yes, well. When utilising All-Speak I hear words in the Asgardian tongue, though I do speak more than one language.”

“So you can turn it off?”

“Not easily, it took me several years to find the books covering the process.”

Tony hummed, “Then I could maybe use it to brush up on my languages too. I don’t do much with French unless I’m in Quebec. Think you’d mind messing with your language centre so I can woo you in the language of love?”

Startling, Loki blinked, “I… don’t believe I follow..?”

“You’ve been on Earth for eight years and never heard that French is the language of love?” He didn’t lift the faceplate up. Instead, Tony made an exaggerated gesture with his arms and leaned forward to convey his disbelief. “I guess you don’t know ‘omlette du fromage’?”

Loki blinked owlishly. “That didn’t sound like it was trying to be a sentence. And… I have no idea what cheese and eggs have to do with anything when neither are involved in our dinner.”

Tony raised a finger. “Remind me. I have to set up a watch list for you before you become as lost as Stars and Spangles.”

* * *

It took a month to get the top floors of Stark Tower repaired and a further three months for all the adjustments to be made, allowing the Avengers to move in. Bruce had been the first one moved to the Tower, back when the penthouse floors were viable, with Tony doing the bare minimum to satisfy Fury that Bruce was being supervised while giving the other man as much free reign as he feasibly could. Bruce was technically the Tower’s only permanent resident as the others all had other homes they used; Steve generally using the suites Tony had provided him with as a stop-over location claiming everything looked ‘too expensive and luxurious’, while Natasha and Clint came and went as missions dictated and Tony and Loki alternated between the Malibu residence and the Tower as Tony’s whims and work commitments dictated.

Currently they were in the Tower as Tony was expecting a delivery of alien tech to dismantle in the next day or two. Loki had left the man to sleep in and went to the communal kitchen, discovering the remaining Avengers in various states of coffee-gathering or breakfast-making in Steve’s case as he minded something in a frying pan.

“Morning, Loki,” Clint greeted, waving from his spot on the arm of a sofa, the empty seat beside him soon filled by Natasha, a steaming mug in each hand. “No Stark?”

“Tony’s not a morning person.” A caveat of going to bed long after midnight, though sometimes he managed to operate on a regular human’s sleep schedule.

“You walk different barefoot,” Natasha noted, watching Loki as he padded towards the kettle, her words causing him to pause and look down at his bare toes.

“Ah that would be Helblindi’s fault,” Loki dismissed resuming his journey towards caffeine, passing Bruce who was leafing through the box of herbal teas.

“Helblindi?”

“My older brother. The one that isn’t king,” he clarified, plucking a mug from the cupboard, throwing an Assam tea bag into it and grabbing the kettle. “Jotunheim is a land of ice, vast lakes, caverns and mountainous snowy ranges. When I started living there, Helblindi was insistent I get rid of my shoes, and waxed poetic for hours about the benefits of walking toes first while barefoot. He’d have me walk on thin ice, feeling it out until walking like that became habit.”

“Do you get along well with your brothers then?” Bruce asked. “You mentioned you left around the time the other one became king.”

“Býleistr,” Loki nodded, “I like them both well enough. More than Thor, but that could simply be an age thing. Bý is twice my age and it shows. He’s very mature and really feels the weight of his station. He’s quite boring in fact,” Loki said with a smile and a shrug of his shoulder. “But he’s quite talented at sculpting.”

“Like… art sculpting?”

“Mhmm, whenever he was stressed Blindi and I would find him somewhere twisting ice.” Loki took a sip of his tea. “Helblindi is a couple of hundred years older than me and has his own stargazing platform on the roof of Utgard. He loves animals and is incredibly loyal. He’ll lie to anyone if it protects those he cares about.”

“They sound nice,” Bruce smiled.

“They are. They have been very good to me. And it’s nice to be able to talk about them.” Loki looked sympathetically to Clint and Natasha, who spoke little of their home lives in order to keep the few remaining loved ones they had safe.

“Shame Jotunheim itself sounds uh… Like Alaska but… colder,” said Clint making Loki laugh.

“It is certainly not as scenic as Earth.”

“So,” Clint drawled. “Can I see alien you? I kinda missed out last time what with the mind control.”

Loki thought it over around another sip of tea before nodding softly. He shifted so he had more room, stooping so he could be sure his horns wouldn’t bump the ceiling or the walls then allowed his Jotun form to take over. Clint’s eyes were wide but he didn’t step back. He actually approached, circling Loki who waited with baited breath.

Finally, Clint spoke, “You know, those pants do nothing for your ass, no matter how tall you are.”

Snickering, Loki put his head in his hand. “Sorry, next time I’ll change into the Kjilt.” He reached back for his mug, which looked more like an espresso cup in his large hands. “I’m assuming the whole alien thing is… okay?”

Clint nodded, “I mean, I can’t exactly blame you. If I was an alien I’d have lied too. Though I probably wouldn’t have joined a spy organisation.”

“Aww,” Loki drawled, “But being a spy is fun.”

“I’ll swap, you can be the little guy with a bow and no powers and I’ll be the magic giant goat-man.”

Loki chuckled coating himself in green energy, his form shifting into that of Clint, “That could be fun,” he said, his voice eerily similar to Clint’s. No one else was laughing however. “Too soon?” He quickly changed back to his As form, put his cup down and raised his hands in surrender. No one had raised a weapon, but he knew the look of alarm on the faces of the Avengers, could see the cogs of assessment turning in Clint and Natasha’s eyes.

“You can turn into other people?” Natasha asked in the same tone she used to assess threats.

“No. It’s just an illusion, the same as if I were to make you look like someone else. It would dissipate at a touch,” Loki said, keeping his eyes locked on hers. He kept his hands in clear view and empty of items, magic or otherwise.

“Does Fury know?” Clint asked, arms crossing.

“It came up in the debrief,” Loki nodded. “I made he and Phil look like each other. I do it primarily as a joke, I’ve never used it for anything serious,” he insisted.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Bruce said from beside Loki. “I believe you. We believe you, right guys?” Steve stared, clearly still processing magic all over again. Natasha and Clint nodded, but looked no less threatening. Frowning, Bruce said a little louder, “Lay off him already.”

Clint took a couple of steps back, head tilting in consideration before shrugging. “If Fury knows and is cool with it, I’ve no reason not to be. And if he doesn’t know he will do soon.”

Loki’s phone buzzed his pocket. Retrieving it showed two texts:

**Tony: _You okay? JARVIS is worried._**

That was actually quite sweet. Finding one of JARVIS’s sensors, he smiled softly and opened the second message, from Natasha:

**Widow: _I swear if you and Clint escalate your prank war with magic I’ll string both of you up from the rafters._**

“Everything okay?” asked Natasha as though she hadn’t just threatened him.

“Oh fine, Natasha. Peachy.” He grinned, fingers dancing on the keyboard as he replied to Tony, Natasha's message giving him an idea. **_I need you to order me one thousand rubber ducks of various sizes. I’m going to war with Natasha and Clint._**

“ _Pardon me, Avengers,_ ” JARVIS said after a moment from the kitchen speakers. “ _Mr Stark would like me to inform you that, if the SHIELD agents damage anything or and I quote, ‘if retribution appears in my bedroom you can all find another tower to crash in’._ ”

“Does that include me, JARVIS?” Loki asked biting down a smirk.

“ _It does, Sir. Although I am more than happy to process your earlier request._ ”

Laughing, Loki nodded, “I’ll take the risk. Reduce it to a tenth though.”

“ _Excellent._ ”

His shoulders shook with mirth, choking down snickers when Steve spoke up, “Why does JARVIS sound like he’s getting revenge on Tony?”

“He probably is,” Loki allowed around a chuckle. “Are you familiar with Artificial Intelligence? JARVIS learns from every conversation, though it’s not immediately obvious. He’s been expressing opinions more forcefully for a while now.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Bruce asked, “Whole computer take over thing?”

Loki waved a hand. “No, JARVIS is harmless.”

“ _My programming does not allow for malicious behaviour_ ,” JARVIS informed helpfully. “ _But I do enjoy Mr Laufeyson’s tricks. Unlike with Mr Stark’s antics, the house generally remains intact._ ”

“That’s an Iron Man thing,” Loki argued, shaking his head.

“ _He did put several holes in the Malibu house so that he could create a new element_.”

“Oh I know, Phil still complains about the fact he used Captain America’s shield to level out one of his coils,” Loki smirked, conjuring his work file to read around his remaining tea. He paused a moment and glanced at the group. “By the way, if the magic is at all off putting, tell me. I do not mind having to do things mundanely.”

Steve was the first to speak up, “No no! The magic is fine. We should… probably get used to it anyway if you’re going to use it on missions.” He looked around to find the others nodding. “Also what? He was using my shield to keep a wire level?”


	6. Movie Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the reviews and kudos!
> 
> I have a lot of coursework at the moment, so I think I'll be giving next week a pass on updating, just so I can sort my assignments out, but we'll be back with another chapter on the 22nd. (Which should have us circa Iron Man 3)

While killing time before a meeting, Loki had been entertaining himself with one of the apps on his Starkphone though that soon devolved into the man curling up on the sofa in the penthouse lost in thought as his mind drifted to Asgard and Thor.

It would only be a matter of time before Thor returned, or if not him, then some other Asgardian. They were stubborn, all of them, and the waiting and not knowing was the worst part. He didn’t have contacts in Asgard and there was no guarantee of finding out trouble was brewing in Jotunheim or even being able to do anything about it.

“You okay, Boo?”

Loki looked up to find Tony standing over him. “Just… thinking,” he said with a heavy sigh. Sitting on the sofa arm, Tony slid his arm around Loki’s shoulders.

“About your other brother?” Humming, Loki shifted so his head was on Tony’s thigh. “I still say we could sneak away to Jotunheim and play with the snow bros.”

Loki chuckled lightly. “And I still say you’d freeze your bollocks off before you had any fun there. And I like your bollocks.”

“Just those?” Tony cocked his head. “Anything else you like?”

“Hmm, well. You have a terrible personality,” Loki teased, “But I do find the way your armour slips on to be very arousing.”

“Oh, is that so?” Tony was grinning now, moving to straddle Loki’s lap. More than happy for the distraction, Loki slipped his arms around Tony’s hips. “That’s the most attractive part?”

“No.” He closed the distance between them to kiss Tony, “I also like how expressive your eyes are, how you feel right in my arms and how you always seem to be able to tell when I’m having a bad time and cheer me up.” Rather than reply immediately, Tony returned the kiss, his hands crossing behind Loki’s neck.

“I’ve done the lone dark brooding thing. It sucks,” Tony murmured a moment later, pulling back to take Loki in. “But then I let someone in and they got me to share the shitty stuff. And it didn’t make what was happening any better or worse, but I felt lighter for talking about it. To know that even though I was scared, that there was someone there with me, willing to take whatever part of the burden they could meant everything. So I’m here, whenever you want to talk.”

“If it does you so well, then why are you avoiding speaking about your nightmares?”

Tony looked away. “That… okay, yeah, that’s fair.” He sighed heavily, before turning back to Loki’s face. “But tell me your problems anyway?”

Loki nodded, reaching a little further to link his fingers around Tony. “I’m scared. Of what Asgard might do. I don’t know if they’ll hit here or go to Utgard, and I’m terrified that they’re going to hurt my family.” Tony pulled Loki closer so the Jotun could rest his head against Tony’s chest, the human stroking his hair, tucking Loki’s head under his chin.

“It’s been months, maybe they’ve decided not to bother?”

“Perhaps,” Loki murmured into Tony’s collarbone. “Really, I should be coming up with a plan against them, but it’s been so long since I’ve had to fear for my freedom. To worry about Odin’s displeasure.”

“He’s that good of a Dad huh?” Tony remarked dryly, fingers dipping into Loki’s hair, trying to gently pull through the knots in the strands.

Aware that if he allowed himself to linger on those dark thoughts it would lead to nothing good, Loki changed tact, hooking his arms under Tony’s thighs. They could both do with a little distracting. He stood up, Tony letting out a yelp, legs locking around Loki’s waist. “Loki?”

“We’re going to our room,” Loki told him.

“We are?” Tony clung to Loki as the taller man walked them to the elevator. “You’re really strong.”

Loki grinned. “Thank you.”

Tony blinked in confusion. “Weren’t we having a serious conversation a second ago?” he asked, looking between Loki and the closed elevator doors. “I’m asking because you picked me up and my body seems to have forgotten I’m not a teenager on their first date and my dick is very hard and confused.”

Loki looked at Tony with a bemused smirk and questioning eyebrow. “You’re aroused I’m strong enough to carry you?”

“Well I hadn’t really thought about it before and now all I can think about is being fucked against the wall by you and I’m just super confused because we were being tender and having a moment and now it’s actually a little painful down there.”

“Tony, you’re babbling,” Loki told him, cutting him off with a kiss. “How about we shelf the feelings talk a moment and get you unconfused? I have a SHIELD meeting in…” He checked Tony’s watch. “Twenty minutes.”

“You’re gonna be late even if you teleport,” Tony told him.

“Well then maybe I should tear your chinos off to save time?”

Tony’s eyes widened, his legs tightening around Loki. “JARVIS, save the security footage of the next hour.”

* * *

“ _Is everything alright, sir_?” JARVIS asked Loki as the man entered the elevator.

“Hmm?” Loki looked up from his phone, taking a moment to find one of JARVIS’s sensors before shooting it a quizzical look.

“ _Your blood pressure is elevated and you appear displeased, sir_ ,” JARVIS explained.

“Ah.” Loki gave a half shrug, “Never let anyone tell you the life of a spy is exciting, JARVIS. It seems I am doomed to an endless cycle of unhelpful emails and borderline harassment from one Mr Hammer.” He stowed his phone in his pocket and after realising he had neither pressed a button or given JARVIS a command, hitting the button for the floor with the kitchen. “Is the Tower occupied today?”

“ _Yes, sir. A full house,_ ” JARVIS replied. “ _I believe Agent Romanoff has found your… decoration._ ”

Loki’s phone buzzed. “Clint too,” Loki smirked, looking at the image he’d been sent by the archer. It showed Natasha’s room, with every surface covered in rubber ducks from the size of a quarter to a two foot inflatable duck with hair very similar to Natasha’s, each of which Loki had spent the better part of two hours placing into neat lines. “I especially love that you found a rubber duck with red hair, JARVIS.”

“ _I do not think Agent Romanoff feels the same_ ,” JARVIS replied with amusement as Loki exited the elevator.

“LOKI!”

Loki pursed his lips at Natasha’s shout from the floor above. “No, I think you’re right, JARVIS.” Feet pounded in the stairwell, Clint appearing with a grin.

“I love it. It’s quackers.”

Loki shook his head with a huge smile, “That joke was awful.”

Clint clapped Loki on the back and threw an arm around his shoulders, steering them into the kitchen. Steve was already at the stove, and turned from his cooking to quirk an eyebrow at the two as they entered, “Do I want to know or should I just run before the knives start flying?”

“Nah, Nat’s not gonna chase him,” Clint assured. “What’re you making?”

Loki stared, a look of mock horror on his face. “No! Are you keeping me here so she can get revenge?” He stabbed a finger at Clint. “Oh you are next.”

“I’m just making mac and cheese,” Steve replied, looking between the two. “How is living with spies like living with children?” he muttered with a shake of his head.

“Will you still help me and Nat get one over on Phil?” Clint asked, ignoring Steve’s comment.

“Oh of course, your idea is hilarious,” Loki nodded. “But at some point you are also back on prank rotation.”

“Was I ever off?”

“Nope!” Both spies laughed, Clint slipping onto a barstool while Loki looked in the fridge and pulled out a carton of juice.

Steve looked over his shoulder at the two. “I’ve probably made too much if you want some?”

“Are you sure?” Clint asked, “I’m happy to make my own food.”

Steve waved him off, “Yeah, it’s fine. Loki?”

“No, but thank you for the offer.” Loki poured himself some juice and offered it to both men before putting it back in the fridge. He sat on the stool beside Clint’s, pulling out his phone again to check his emails and groaned. “Fucking Hammer. I thought I was off that detail?”

“Maybe he hacked and found your new number?” Clint suggested, putting his hand out for the phone.

“Are you guys allowed to share like that?” Steve asked, slipping a plate of pasta over to Clint, his eyes on Loki’s phone as Clint took it and looked over the message.

“Only if you’re on the same detail, but like Loki says Hammer shouldn’t be contacting him. The three of us were taken off of cover missions because of the New York footage,” Clint shrugged. “Also seriously? You text Stark on this phone?”

“Oh don’t look disappointed, that’s exactly why you’re in my texts not my emails,” Loki rolled his eyes.

Steve’s eyes widened, “Clint!”

“Steve, it’s fine, they’re like… creepily tame texts,” Clint scrolled up through older messages.

“I’ve only had that phone a month,” Loki reminded him, “I think most of it is just him complaining about being in shareholder meetings or asking if I will be home that night.”

“Who’re ‘the kids’?”

“Dum-E and U. JARVIS counts too, but he is rarely in trouble.” At the quirk of Steve’s eyebrow, Loki elaborated. “Tony’s arm robots he keeps in his workshop.”

“You’re… co-parenting robots?” Steve asked slowly.

JARVIS was the one to reply, “ _I suppose that would be one way of defining it. Does that make Miss Potts a babysitter of sorts?_ ”

Loki shook his head with a smirk, “Tony likes his nicknames, but I think the only one Pepper is minding is him. You’re a big boy, JARVIS.”

“ _Thank you, Sir. Perhaps I shall order myself balloons._ ”

Loki’s eyes widened, his mouth making a little ‘o’. “Ooh. Yes, do that!”

JARVIS sounded like he was sighing in exasperation. “ _I’m starting to think I’m the parent._ ”

“I’m in agreement,” Clint smirked, still looking at Loki’s phone. “Lokes just got a text from Stark that says ‘I licked the thing’.”

“Does it say he needs help?”

“Yeah.”

Loki sighed, pushing up to his feet, “JARVIS, where’s your Daddy?”

* * *

‘The thing’ had been a weapon salvaged in New York, or rather, the core of it. And somehow the result had been Tony being temporarily paralyzed and falling onto shards of glass. Because _of course_. Gently scooping Tony up, Loki had teleported them to the penthouse and laid Tony on the sofa before fetching the first aid kit to start patching the other man up.

“The ceiling is really brown,” said Tony after a while. “Do you think we should redecorate?”

“I don’t mind it.” Loki didn’t look up from where he was knelt on the floor beside the sofa, carefully picking glass out of Tony’s arm with tweezers. “Are you okay?”

He hummed, “I’m starting to feel my toes.”

Loki paused, putting the tweezers onto the coffee table to laugh, head slipping into one hand. After a moment he heard Tony chuckling too. They stayed like that for a while, laughing at the absurdity of it all. Eventually though, Loki composed himself enough to get back to his task. “Perhaps don’t lick the thing unsupervised next time?”

Tony scoffed, and grinned back, “You gonna watch me work?”

“I could watch you work all day. But I don’t think much working would get done. Certainly I wouldn’t get anything done. Sorry,” he added, looking up and seeing Tony’s grimace as a slightly larger piece of glass was removed.

“Nah, it’s okay,” Tony said with a slight hiss of pain. “Thanks though, for cleaning me up.”

“You’re very welcome.”

They sat in quiet for several minutes, with only the sounds that of glass dropping on the coffee table and Tony’s occasional hisses of pain or small whoops of satisfaction as the feeling came back in his various limbs, shifting more on the sofa as time went on.

Once he was done, they sat on the sofa, Tony’s head in his lap, Loki carding his fingers through Tony’s hair while the man told him about his theories on the alien weapon, gesticulating with his good hand.

“Hey, can your magic do that?” Tony asked, cutting himself off suddenly. “Like, what are the limits?”

“Hmm? Well, certainly with the illusions, they are intangible, so that’s a hard limit on them,” Loki said. “Conjuration is slightly different, I can create ice easily enough as you saw and I do a little with fire, but I haven’t much experience with other elements. I can’t make things just appear but I can store items in pocket dimensions.”

“Oh, like with the coffees?” Loki nodded. “So, you have multiple ones as opposed to one big one? What are they like inside?”

“Ah, it’s hard to explain what they’re like. They are just… kind of there,” Loki said slowly. “They are sort of… like a chest of drawers with no gravity. I can probably fit something as big as the coffee table in them, but I prefer to use them for small objects on a temporary basis.”

“So you’ve nothing in them now?”

“I keep my wallet in there. And most of my knives.” Taking his hand from Tony’s hair, Loki opened up a pocket he hadn’t used in some time. “And this. My pack. I couldn’t really leave it around my apartment in case SHIELD decided to nosy. You know. What with being an illegal alien and it containing items from both Asgard and Jotunheim.” He put the leather drawstring bag back into its place.

“How come you don’t keep your phone in there?” Tony asked letting out a small happy noise as Loki’s hand went back to playing with his hair.

“Because it is strange not to have a phone on you. I can get away with no wallet, but if I were to get mugged or captured the lack of phone would be noteworthy.”

“You said that in your Agent Voice.”

Loki smiled down at Tony. “I have an Agent Voice?”

“Yeah, all you SHIELD guys have this whimsical tone you use when you talk about weird stuff and try to tell people it’s normal and everything’s fine,” Tony said with a smirk, “Pair it with that smile of yours and I’ll bet everyone just nods and wanders off.”

“That or they slip their number into my top pocket,” Loki agreed.

“Mhmm, that’s because you’re gorgeous.” Tony reached up to nudge Loki’s head closer, leaning up to kiss him. Settling back into Loki’s lap, Tony’s smirk widened at the slight blush on Loki’s cheeks. “Yeah, I could totally believe you’re a god from this angle.”

Loki felt his face flush more. “Sh-shut up,” he mumbled, nervous smile pulling at his lips. He looked down into Tony’s dark eyes, more than a little mesmerized himself. “I think I’m the lucky one…”

“Yeah, I could totally rock the god look,” Tony agreed, making the most delightful squeak when Loki poked him under the ribs. “Hey!”

“Your ego is the size of this building I swear.”

“You’re totally smiling though, which means you love it.”

Loki rolled his eyes, shaking his head. “Incorrigible.”

The elevator dinged, releasing Clint and Natasha, the former spotting the couple on the sofa. “Are we interrupting?”

“No, you’re fine,” Loki assured.

Tony turned his head to greet the spies as they sat across the coffee table, “I kinda messed up with the alien tech.”

“Yeah I can see,” Natasha frowned at Tony’s arm. His hand had been bandaged up to mid forearm, though there were other minor nicks that had scabbed over further up. “What happened?”

“I was doing a controlled experiment and ended up in some glass.”

“Is the gun still in one piece?”

“No it’s in many – but that was entirely intentional,” Tony said, “How else am I meant to figure out how it works?”

Clint reached forward and flicked the television on, hitting mute and navigating to the football scores. “I asked about the Hammer detail,” he said to Loki, “Made it out like you started calling Coulson before Tony had his space-accident and tossed your phone to me so Phil wouldn’t get worried.”

“And what did Phil say?” Loki asked at the same time Tony noted, “Space-accident sounds way cooler than what happened. I’m calling them space-accidents now.”

“That Hammer might actually have hacked you. Or at least have been very insistent with whoever took over because you did get taken off that detail.”

Loki groaned. “I’ll call Hammer later. Speaking of: Clint, phone,” he said making a ‘give me’ gesture with his hand.

“It’s gotta be the latter,” said Tony. “That guy can’t hack his way out of a wet paper bag with a steak knife.”

“You bought us Chinese by the way,” Clint said tossing Loki his phone. “We were thinking we could have a movie night?”

Loki opened the app and found Clint had loaded the cart with food but not actually processed it. “Add what you want, it seems I’m buying dinner,” he told Tony, letting the other man take his phone.

“Nice! I like not buying stuff,” Tony grinned. “You picked a movie, Robin Hood?”

“Cap’s picking,” said Natasha. “Turns out he has a big watch list of iconic films through the eras.”

Tony flicked his gaze to Loki, “We’re sitting at the back and making out. Clearly the movie’s gonna be a snore fest.”

Loki scoffed, “I’ve only been on Earth eight years. I might get invested in the film.”

“You’ll be significantly less invested if I suck you off.”

“True, but I would probably throw you out of that window,” Loki jerked his head to the floor to ceiling window behind them. “You know I don’t like that sort of thing.”

Clint quirked an eyebrow, “You don’t like being sucked off?”

“Oh no, he loves that,” Tony smiled.

Loki shook his head, frowning at both men. “I dislike people being lewd in public spaces. It’s hardly an unusual concept.” He put up with it when it became necessary on SHIELD missions, but generally, Loki liked bedroom dealings to remain in the bedroom.

“Valid,” Clint shrugged. “Did that sort of thing come up a lot in Jotunheim?”

“Not really, Jotnar are more for cuddling. Asgardians however are very much into raucous behaviour.”

“That sounds adorable,” Tony smiled. “Bunch’a Smurfs all snuggling in the snow.”

Loki scoffed softly, “We have beds in Jotunheim, Tony. With furs for blankets.”

“What, like real furs?”

“We don’t have synthetic materials, so yes. That Kjilt you’ve seen me in is the pelt of one of the beasts of Jotunheim. Most realms don’t synthesise fabrics, though Vanaheim has vast amounts of cotton plant,” Loki acknowledged. “I suppose it was the developmental exchange made when technology evolved to allow the use of Seidr on realms like Alfheim and Jotunheim compared to the machine industrial revolution here.”

“Huh,” Tony hummed, lost in some day dream or other. Chuckling, Loki returned to threading his fingers through Tony’s hair, plucking his phone from the human and hitting confirm order.

When the takeaway arrived, they were all gathered in the penthouse suite, Loki curled up on the sofa in his Jotun skin at Tony’s request (“It’s been months and I still haven’t got to squeeze that blue ass!”). He found it sweet if a little rude and certainly more than a little dangerous.

“Huh that’s weird. Loki, your food’s missing,” Steve said, looking around and counting meals.

“Hmm?” Loki looked up from the book he was reading, “No, I didn’t order anything, so nothing’s missing.” He had a large glass of water next to him and that was all he craved for the moment.

“You planning on stealing mine?” Tony guessed, “Cheapskate.”

Loki laughed, “No, no. I am not hungry. I don’t know how you people eat so often.” He looked back to his book, rolling his eyes as JARVIS chimed in.

“ _Sir, Loki has not eaten for the last six days_.”

“Eh? Loki, seriously?!”

Loki shrugged a shoulder, “I eat once a week or so. I’ve tried eating more often to fit in with humans but it isn’t worth the bloating when I can just tell someone I ate earlier.” He was surprised it had taken them this long to notice really. True he hadn’t thought to bring it up and with everyone to-ing and fro-ing from the tower at all hours as well as Tony’s own hectic schedules for eating and sleep it had likely allowed Loki’s habits to fall under the radar, with JARVIS not calling him out sooner for one reason or another.

“Okay, now I’m just straight up jealous,” said Tony, noodle box in hand. “This is another alien thing right? So not only are you gigantic – which damnit, like you weren’t already tall enough, now I’ll never get to be big spoon – you have magic powers, don’t melt in summer, _and_ don’t have to waste valuable time eating?” He pouted, Loki covering his mouth to stifle his chuckling.

“There are downsides,” Loki offered, “As amazing as that smells, I really would feel awful having some now. And as much as we joke about you not having had your fill of my blue arse, if you do want to sit together and watch the film, you’re doing so with a blanket.”

“Huh? But it’s like seventy degrees in here,” Tony frowned.

Loki levelled him with his best disapproving look. “Yes and my skin is much cooler than that.”

“I thought you could control its temperature?” Natasha said as she stole one of Clint’s dumplings.

“I can, but I’ve never had to do it for extended periods. I just don’t want to hurt you, accidentally or otherwise,” he added to Tony.

“Well my couch isn’t an icicle,” Tony pointed out, “But fine. Fair. I’d rather not freeze my ass off either.”

They settled in with their food, Loki finishing the page he was on, Tony cocooned in his blanket on Loki’s lap, while JARVIS helped Steve sort his movie list out.

“Huh. Your nails are black,” Tony noticed around Loki shifting to put his book to one side.

“Yes?”

“You ever paint them?”

Loki blinked in surprise, “I paint the pale ones black when I have more than a few days off, but no, not generally.”

“So you prefer them like this?”

“Why the sudden fascination with my hands, Tony?” Loki was smiling, but he was still curious.

Tony snuggled closer and poked a chopstick into the channel between Loki’s house lines on his forearm, “Just… fascinated in general. You know you can just blue out whenever you want?” he said, flickering his gaze up from Loki’s body to his face.

“Human furniture isn’t really proportioned for it, but I know. And I am very thankful all of you are taking this as positively as you are,” Loki said, looking around the room.

From his space on the other side of Natasha, Bruce laughed. “If they can handle the idea me turning big and green and very angry they can clearly manage you being big, blue and decidedly more chill.”

Loki smiled at Bruce’s joke, intentional or not and was spared a reply by JARVIS dimmed the lights to allow the film to start. He had no intention of watching the film though, his gaze periodically checking Tony over for signs he was too cold. While it didn’t matter too much if Tony nodded off (it would probably be a good thing as JARVIS had noted Tony hadn’t slept in almost forty hours now), Loki feared falling asleep himself, losing control of his temperature and unintentionally freeze burning the other man.

His Jotun form naturally had an amount of night vision due to Jotunheim being a much darker planet and though Loki couldn’t see as well as other Jotun his age born and raised solely on Jotunheim, he was able to easily pick out Tony’s shifting and assess whether it was just fidgeting or if he was starting to shiver. Around him the humans chattered sometimes, answering contextual questions from Steve or else correcting an inaccuracy in the film’s science or fighting sequences. It all felt quite nice, particularly when Tony had finished his meal and his attention had wandered, pulling out his phone to tap at quietly, curling into Loki more.

The phone was hidden when the credits rolled and Steve asked around if no one minding watching the next film. With no objections, they continued on, making a night of it until it was dark out and one by one they excused themselves off to bed.


	7. Christmas is Full of LOUD NOISES

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone!
> 
> I... had more to write on this than I thought I did, so editing took a little while.
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos and comments!

“ _Sir, may I request you march Mr Stark to bed_?” JARVIS said as Loki entered the Malibu house.

“Hello to you too.” Loki frowned, “Is everything alright, JARVIS?”

“I’m fine!” Tony shouted from downstairs. Meaning he had thrown the workshop door open just to say that. Something clearly _had_ happened.

Sighing through his nose, Loki took his jacket off and threw it over the back of the sofa as headed for the stairs to the workshop, smiling at the sticky note baring the words ‘Stark Industries R&D’ in Loki’s handwriting. He’d stuck it on the workshop door as a joke before he left a week ago and had fully expected the note to have ended up in the bin, or at least fallen from the door. Beyond the glass however was chaos, consisting of smashed glass, bits of Iron Man armour everywhere and Tony and Dum-E trying to tidy up, each rather awkwardly, a motion rather usual for Dum-E, whose movements were generally quite clunky, but indicative of Tony likely being injured.

He sighed, entering his passcode on the number pad beside the door and entered. “Should I ask what happened?” Loki inquired, taking in Tony’s bloody lip and the red spots on his forearms.

Tony looked up, his arms full of various sections of armour. “Hey, Boo,” he said tiredly, “Catch any bad guys?”

“Mhmm, a few,” Loki answered evasively, coming closer and helping Tony clean up. “How have things here been?”

“Uh… not… not great,” Tony said slowly, shaking his head. They put the bits of armour on a workbench and left Dum-E to clean the glass.

Loki pursed his lips, “Not sleeping?” he guessed.

“ _It has been over seventy-two hours since Mr Stark last slept_.”

“Thanks, JARVIS,” Tony frowned, raising one hand to rub at his face. “He… he’s not wrong. But… I just… can’t. Sleep is scary.”

“That fear is exacerbated by lack of sleep,” Loki pointed out softly. “Can we at least go upstairs and have you sit for a bit?” He pointed at Tony’s face and arms. “Clean you up maybe?”

“The uh, the arms are on purpose. Uhm, electronic sensors to mobilize the suit,” he explained, flapping one hand. “The detachable ones are nice but, you know if they’re inside me then I’m always ready to suit up.”

And paranoid, Loki thought but didn’t say. He couldn’t argue with Tony’s feelings of vulnerability, but he did disagree with the increasingly unhealthy methods of coping Tony was employing. “Come on,” he encouraged, gently pulling Tony’s hand.

“Can your magic heal?” Tony asked a while later, curled up against Loki on the sofa. Tony’s lip had been cleaned, his left wrist, which they thought was sprained, was gently clasped in Loki’s blue fingers, while the rest of Tony was wrapped in a blanket.

“I never really learned any healing magic,” Loki confessed. “I can cure headaches, but not much else. But healing magic does exist.”

Tony yawned, shifting slightly to press his forehead against Loki’s chest.

Raising his free hand to gently card it through Tony’s hair, Loki said, “I used to use magic to help Thor sleep when there were thunderstorms outside. I don’t know that it will help you, but I want to extend the offer.”

Silence followed for a long moment, long enough for Loki to worry he’d said the wrong thing. “Not tonight,” Tony said eventually. “I… it’s just bad dreams. I’ve put up with worse.” The TV was on and as the time dragged by, Tony’s exhaustion finally caught up with him, pulling him into the haze of unconsciousness. A mere hour later, the broadcast for the channel Loki had been watching was hacked and a harshly cut infomercial played, voiced over by a man in long flowing robes who declared himself the Mandarin.

Two days later there was a bombing in Sudan and the TV stations were unanimously hacked again. Both Loki and Tony had been working in the living room with the news on in the background at the time, turning when the high pitched beep from the change in broadcast caught their attentions.

“JARVIS, any idea about the source of that broadcast?” Tony asked frowning at the TV once the Mandarin’s segment had ended. He reached for the remote and flipped through the news channels, each reporting that this was the second broadcast, with a couple of stations having information on the alleged bombing and the tale the Mandarin had spun about the Braves being away, for those who hadn’t covered the topic in their state’s history lessons. “When was the first hack?”

“ _Two days previously, at seven thirty-eight p.m._ ,” replied JARVIS dutifully. “ _You were sleeping on the sofa._ ”

Tony’s eyebrows knit together, “So by omission, Loki was awake and saw it?”

“ _That is correct_.”

Loki turned from the television to meet Tony’s gaze. “’Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence’.”

“And ‘three times is enemy action’,” Tony finished. “You could have at least mentioned it. “

“I thought it was just another group trying to take credit for accidents or other terrorists,” Loki admitted. “Though you have to admit, when you remove the possibility of him causing mass murder, he does have a point of argument.”

“And when you add it back in he’s just another asshole with weapons of mass destruction attacking innocent people.”

“All the same, I cannot predict the future, nor will I alert you to every facet of violence on the television,” Loki said, frowning slightly himself at Tony’s clipped tone. “That’s what the news is for.”

Tony huffed but let the matter slide after setting JARVIS to the task of gathering any information there was on the Mandarin, and to alert him to further broadcasts.

* * *

“Are SHIELD looking into him? The Mandarin,” Tony asked. They had been five broadcasts now and enough acts of terrorism that the Mandarin was on the government’s radar, as shown by the frankly awful decision by the Air Force to give War Machine a rebrand.

“Not as far as I know,” Loki replied, curled up on the sofa with a crossword puzzle. “That does not mean that someone at SHIELD is not, just that I do not know of any active missions to infiltrate or investigate.”

“Could you… ask around?”

Loki let a soft sigh out through his nose and put the newspaper down. “That is a conflict of interest. And we both know you could just hack SHIELD’s servers.”

“I could do it faster with your passwords,” Tony pointed out.

“You could,” Loki agreed, rising to approach Tony who was lacing his shoes by the door. “But there is a large difference between using James Rhodes’ logins to speed up your information gathering which earns minimal ire, and using mine which will have half a battalion of knife wielding spies descend upon the house.”

“It’s almost Christmas,” Tony tried, “if they all wear green we can pretend they’re Santa’s elves.”

Loki laughed, “No. Now hurry up and go meet your friend. I can’t bring your present into the house if you never leave.”

Tony’s eyes widened and his eyebrows danced up and down as interest and suspicion fought for dominance. “What the hell have you got me?”

“Telling you would ruin the surprise,” Loki said pointedly, slipping a hand to the side of Tony’s neck before leaning in for a kiss. “Go. Coronel Rhodes is waiting.”

“Are you in for dinner?”

“Of course. I need to make sure you don’t turn the house upside down looking for your gift,” Loki teased. Tony grinned, leaning up to press his lips to Loki’s. They lingered there a moment, Loki melting into Tony’s touch as his hands looped around Loki’s waist. They broke apart and after a brief squeeze of Loki’s hand, Tony hurried off to keep his lunch date with Rhodey.

Left to his own devices, Loki returned to his crossword for some time before turning his mind to the million dollar question, a finger idly rubbing at his Uru bracelets as he did so. What did one get the man who literally had everything? In previous years, Loki had not bought Tony gifts, a combination of their early relationship being less committed and unsure in that area, along with Loki’s lack of familiarity with Earth’s gift-giving holidays. Tony had never complained about the lack of gifts, though he had purchased a number of things for Loki unprompted.

Phil, on the occasions he and Loki had discussed Tony, held the view that people with Tony’s level of wealth didn’t know how to form meaningful bonds with people outside of money, hence the gifting, and that he probably craved quality interactions with people who cared about him, with Loki and Tony’s few friends filling that ideal quite nicely. That, at least in Phil’s opinion, the only thing Tony couldn’t buy was the genuine love of others.

And while Phil made a decent point, there was perhaps one thing Loki could offer Tony. He looked down at his finger, the thin band the digit hooked around. “JARVIS,” he called softly, standing up and heading for the workshop.

“ _Yes, sir_?”

“Would you run a scan for me?”

“ _It would be my pleasure, sir. What do you intend to scan_?” JARVIS enquired as the AI triggered the lights in the workshop, startling Dum-E and U, who whirled over to greet Loki.

“Hello, boys,” Loki smiled at them, gently patting U’s hand and chuckling at Dum-E, who sported a Dunce hat on his hand. “Here, let me get that.” The bot beeped in thanks as Loki gently pried off the tape holding the cap on and removed the paper hat. Placing the Dunce cap on a workbench, Loki stepped around the two bots until he was at the workbench he had seen Tony runs scans and tests from. “I was hoping you could scan this for me JARVIS,” Loki said as he opened one of his pocket dimensions and removed one of his daggers, “and tell me if there is a material on Earth with similar or exact properties.”

“ _I shall see what I can do_.” JARVIS sounded rather intrigued himself. “ _Please place the dagger on the table_.” At once, ribbons of blue danced around the blade, measuring, scanning, and running searches, small windows opening up on the holographic screen below flashing through graphs and images of Earth-based metals as JARVIS compared them to the dagger.

Leaving JARVIS to his work, Loki returned his attention to the two bots who were regarding him curiously. “Do you two want to test something as well?” he asked, looking between Dum-E and U, the latter of whom twisted and adjusted the zoom of his camera in a way that Loki felt was the robot equivalent of U narrowing his eyes.

Raising both hands, palms to the ceiling, Loki forged two large shards of ice, one in each hand and offered them to the robots. “Test away, just don’t break anything or you’ll have to clean up the mess.” Two arms reached out, each bot whirring with excitement as they took their shard and went off to play, U soon finding a hammer to attack his ice with and Dum-E rolling all the way up to the garage door to throw his ice at the reinforced metal. After the second echoing thud from Dum-E’s ministrations, Loki had to cover his mouth with one hand to smother his snickers.

“ _What fresh hell have you unleashed, sir_?” JARVIS said, sounding amused as well.

“Hopefully one covered by the insurance,” Loki mused, only slightly concerned as he watched U’s ice skid around the workshop under the force of the robot’s hammer blows. “How’s your project coming along?”

“ _So far the only metal even vaguely comparable is vibranium, sir,_ ” JARVIS relayed. “ _Are you familiar with the substance_?”

“Vibranium? That is what Captain America’s shield is made from is it not?”

“ _Yes. It is a highly durable metal in incredible scarcity. However, scans suggest the metal of your dagger may be superior. I would like to continue to study it more thoroughly, if you will permit_?”

Loki smiled wider, “Oh I’m sure you’ll get the chance later. For now however, I’d like you to shelve the work you’ve done onto the secure server and not mention it to Tony.”

* * *

Even before New York, Loki generally fell asleep before Tony. As such when they went to bed that night and Loki was mostly ready for sleep he was unsurprised to find Tony sitting up with a tablet in hand. Snuggling into Tony’s side, one hand curled around the man’s waist, Loki let out a contented noise when he felt a hand thread through his hair.

The absent caresses soon drew Loki into a haze of pleasure, dragging him into a light sleep not too long after. He vaguely remembered rolling over, probably in response to Tony wanting to lie down, but was soon hard gone again until the movements of Tony tossing in the bed stirred him awake. Sitting up slowly, Loki pulled his knees close and wrapped his arms around them, watching Tony sadly. The other man was clearly upset, but the little advise Loki had received regarding Tony’s nightmares was not to wake Tony, to let him come around himself. But that made it no more comfortable to watch Tony thrash around in the bed, struggling and scared.

“It’s okay, Tony,” Loki soothed softly, reaching out to gently stroke the back of his fingers against Tony’s temple. Another soft blue glow from behind him startled Loki. He hadn’t heard footsteps and the light wasn’t quite at the right height for any of the room’s light installations. Turning, Loki did a double-take at seeing an Iron Man armour in the bedroom. He had barely opened his mouth with intent to ask JARVIS why he had brought the suit here, only for his eyes to bug as the suit surged forward and locked a hand around Loki’s neck.

Gagging at the fingers digging into his neck and cutting off his air supply, Loki raised his hands to grab at the arm and pull it away only for what little air was in his lungs to leave him in a breathy gasp when the suit’s other hand punched him hard in the gut.

“T-Tony,” Loki croaked, trying to find and kick Tony with his leg. “JAR-ack!”

“Aaah!” The bed jerked beside him and Loki had never been so happy to hear Tony’s voice shout, “Power down!” At once the pressure on Loki’s neck receded, Loki throwing the arm that had been choking him across the room, scrambling back until he was flush against the headboard, eyes wide and sucking in shuddering breaths, eyes locked on the dismantled armour.

“Sorry,” Tony said, “I… I must have summoned him in my sleep. That’s… not supposed to happen.”

“I should hope not,” Loki said at length. He rose to get out of the bed.

“Please don’t go!” Tony said in a rush. “I’ll fix it!”

Loki flicked the bedside light on so Tony could see him before turning back to the man. “I’m not getting back in the bed.” He shook his head. Upon seeing Tony’s broken expression, Loki looked away and sighed. “I’m going to go to the bathroom. Would you please move the armour before I come back?”

“You’ll come back?”

Loki gave a small, nervous nod. He then excused himself and slipped into the en-suite, putting the toilet seat down before curling up on it, shoulders shaking as he tried to take steady breaths. He could hear Tony in the bedroom moving around and only once his footsteps faded and Loki’s breaths had mostly evened out, did he get up and turn to look at his reflection in the mirror. Dark bruises bloomed where the gauntlet had grabbed him, and logically, Loki knew that Tony’s nightmare had played a part in the suit attacking him, but that there was no safety measure stopping that at all scared Loki. Why hadn’t JARVIS stopped the suit? Had Tony installed an overwrite command? Did Tony, in some part of his mind, see Loki as a threat now?

His vision blurred over with tears. As he wiped them away soft knocks on the bathroom door sounded. “Loki? Are you still there?” Tony’s voice trembled as he spoke. “The armour’s all gone now.”

Sniffling, Loki went to the door, pulling it open while his other hand tried to get rid of the tears. “Thank you.” He glanced at the bags under Tony’s eyes and the way he hunched into himself, rather than stand tall and proud as he usually would. “You look like shit.” It was supposed to break the tension between them, and though Tony’s lips twitched in a smile, the attempt still fell flat.

“Pretty sure we both do.” He made to reach for Loki, pausing when Loki stiffened. “Loki?”

The nails of one hand bit into Loki’s other as he clasped his hands in front of him. Forcing himself to relax, Loki let his hands fall to his sides and nodded. “I’m okay.” He wasn’t, but he could compartmentalise, come back to his problems another day.

Loki flinched as Tony slipped into the gap between them, but was quick to loop his arms around Tony and make it so he couldn’t step back. “Sorry,” he muttered into Tony’s hair, kissing his temple.

Tony shuddered and pressed himself against Loki, gripping at his tank top tightly as racking sobs shook the smaller man. They stood there for long moments, Loki not quite all there as he soothed Tony with sweet nothings he didn’t really hear himself before one of them got them onto the pile of cushions by the window Loki lounged on while reading sometimes.

The sun was cresting the horizon before they moved, Tony taking to the workshop and Loki spending an hour in the shower, suddenly very disinclined to the thought of going into the other areas of the house.

“Pathetic,” Loki snarled under his breath, glaring at the door to the bedroom as he dried his hair on his towel. “Stupid.” He hated that he couldn’t make himself turn his back to the door. That the thought of seeing an Iron Man suit filled him with dread, twisted his stomach into knots.

Retrieving his phone, Loki fired off a text to Phil before throwing the device onto the bed and getting dressed. The phone rang as Loki pulled a shirt over his head. “Hello, Phil.”

“ _Should I be worried that you’re texting me your extraction code_?” Phil said instead of a greeting. “ _You’re not on a mission. Did something happen_?”

“Are you busy?” Loki asked. He didn’t sound it, but Phil had a habit of sounding calm and unrushed even when the situation would allow one to be frazzled.

“ _Not at all. If you want I have a free hour before my rendezvous, we could do coffee_?”

Loki nodded. “Coffee sounds… good. Text me the GPS co-ordinates?”

* * *

He and Loki sat outside a café in Florence Phil was partial to, mostly because the bustling tourists and heavy foot-traffic made blending in painfully easy, but also because the seating looked onto the Arno River. Purportedly, Phil had once duelled a squad of foreign agents on the river with an oar while his fellow Agent, Melinda May, disarmed a bomb amidst heavy gunfire.

“So… let me just check I’ve got this right,” Phil started, lowering his drink to the table between them. “Stark has neurological implants that allow him to control his armours, and while having a bad dream, he not only summoned a suit to your bedroom, but had said armour choke you out? Why?”

Loki shrugged a shoulder, thumbing his café latte. “I’m not sure. I wasn’t trying to wake him up until the armour grabbed me. I guess it was looking for a threat?”

“You’re not a threat,” Phil told him pointedly. “Certainly not to Stark at any rate. And if you are? Wear it like a badge of honour. The guy needs a healthy amount of threat in his life.”

“Hard pass on that, Phil.” Loki rolled his eyes, looking out to the river. “I just… what if he is scared of me? Subconsciously.”

Phil held his chin thoughtfully, “Have you given him a reason to be scared of you? What even scares Tony Stark?”

Loki shrugged a shoulder, minding his words as he replied, “Not much. He seems to like my natural form and magic ability. But then… I suppose he could be saying one thing and internalising another.” A voice that sounded all too much like Thor whispered in the back of his mind, _Come home, Loki. I’ll hunt the Frost Giants down and slay them all_.

“Have you talked to him about it?”

“Not yet. He… I didn’t want to bring it up,” Loki shook his head. “He moved the armour and I put it out of my mind.”

Phil gestured between them, “Clearly not completely. So what are you leaving out?” He sipped his coffee and gave Loki a chance to reply. When no answer was forthcoming, Phil continued. “You know, even in the context of SHIELD, not being perfect is understandable. Everyone fears something.”

“That they do,” Loki agreed softly, sighing through his nose. “I’m afraid of it being on purpose. Of it happening again.” Some part of Loki recognised the thoughts as irrational, but his chest felt tighter at the mere suggestion Tony had intended harm.

“So you’re scared of Stark?”

“Not explicitly.” Loki lowered his gaze to the bands of Uru on his wrist, particularly to one marked with the Jotun royal crest. Shifting the hand to his lap, Loki hooked his index finger around the bracelet, running the tip over the crest.

“Rejection then?” Phil guessed, hitting the nail on the head. Loki’s expression must have given him away as Phil added, “Hey, it’s okay. Perfectly reasonable conclusion. You want to know what I think?” Loki looked up from his lap. “I think it was an accident. Neither of you meant to hurt the other, but you look like you’re on the cusp of tears, Lokes. And I’d put money on the same worries you’re having are going around Stark’s mind too.” He shifted to pull out his wallet, pulling out some euros and placing them on the table before getting up. “Purely professionally, Stark has a track record of making bad, self-destructive decisions. The analytics of that show he does so because of a high moral code and desire to protect.”

“How very Captain America of him,” Loki muttered with a dark chuckle.

“And yet those two get along like a Celiac in a wheat factory,” Phil replied, clapping a hand on Loki’s shoulder. “It sounds like the implants are just as much a desire to protect you as they are a want to further his tech. And what happened last night was a genuine accident you two should talk about once you’ve both had time to process it and calm down.” His fingers squeezed into Loki’s shoulder. “I’ll text you once my mission’s over, if you need to talk, ‘kay?”

“Thanks, Phil.” He looked up to shoot Phil a genuine smile. “Good luck out there.”

Phil scoffed, “I got it. Barton’s on backup. We’ll be done in a couple of hours or be turning other agents into pincushions.” That drew a proper laugh from Loki and with a final squeeze of Loki’s shoulder, Phil left, disappearing into the crowd.

* * *

The opportunity to talk about the suit with Tony didn’t arise until almost a week later while Loki was flying back to New York with Natasha and Agent Hill in the Quinjet. The plan was to stay over at Avengers Tower for the night and disperse to permanent residences the next morning and once the New York skyline was in view, Loki had switched his phone on to inform Tony, intending to move on to the more serious topic once in his and Tony’s room in the Tower.

“How have things been with you?”

“ _Eh, so-so_ ,” Tony said, JARVIS playing the call through the room’s speakers while Loki worked his boots off. “ _I think I fixed the sensors, JARVIS is giving the Mark forty-two a test wander. I figured I’d test out giving him more rope with them than usual._ ”

“Is that not going well?”

“ _It’s weird_ ,” Tony gave a small chuckle. “ _Neither of us are really sure what to do. Also JARVIS is terrible at making omelettes._ ”

Loki laughed, “Worse than you?”

“ _Mister Stark gave poor instructions,_ ” JARVIS argued.

“ _There was a lot of eggshells in the omelette,_ ” Tony said, “ _JARVIS is adamant he couldn’t get them out with the suit’s fingers, so I’ve got him working out articulation and pressure with that model of Stark Expo._ ”

“ _I detest the tiny men_ ,” noted JARVIS dryly. “ _Currently I have decapitated eighty-three men, sixty-five women, three children and snapped what I believe was supposed to be a dog in half._ ” Tony and Loki chuckled at that only to be interrupted by JARVIS. “ _Sirs, there has been an explosion in California._ ”

“ _Explosion? Where specifically_?” There was the sound of Tony shifting, likely to activate a holoscreen. “ _Chinese Theatre? What does the Mandarin hate cheap souvenirs now?_ ” Tony griped. “ _It’s him, isn’t it JARVIS?_ ”

“ _I believe so, sir. The temperatures and pattern of the explosion are consistent with other Mandarin attacks._ ” There was a brief pause before JARVIS spoke again. “ _Sir, a registered Stark Industries employee has just been assigned to Los Angeles Mercy Hospital._ ”

Tony was quiet a moment before asking, “ _Anyone I know?_ ”

“ _Mr Harold Hogan._ ”

Loki’s brow furrowed, “That’s… Happy is it not?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” said Tony tightly. “ _Yeah, it is_.”


	8. Burning Temperatures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeling like I ought to update the tags. This is getting hella more angsty than I first anticipated. Thank you again for the comments and kudos!

It was hours before Happy was out of surgery and in that time Tony had only gotten more wound up. It had been a mistake to let him stew, Loki thought, taking in the tight set of Tony’s jaw and the way Tony’s gaze flickered over Happy’s unconscious form as though he were committing Happy’s injuries to memory.

Soon however, Tony’s gaze found Loki where he hovered in the doorway.

“How is he?”

“Bad.” Tony cast his eyes back to Happy as Loki slipped into the room. “He’s in a medically induced coma. There’s burns everywhere, head trauma, internal bleeding,” he reeled off. “His lungs are shot at. And it’s my fault.”

“What?” Loki balked. “How?”

“He wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t been teasing him.” His eyes slipped closed, leaning forward to rest his head in hands. “He called me this afternoon, worried about some guy Pepper was talking to at SI. I thought he was just overreacting.” Understandable, even Loki had heard how obsessive Happy was about security and the amount of complaints it was generating at Stark Industries. “He said he was gonna tail some guy and it put him in a fucking Mandarin attack zone!” Tony shot up to kick the chair he’d been sitting in, gritting his teeth and grunted lowly in pain. “It’s my fault!”

Loki put a firm hand on his shoulder. “It’s not. You could not have predicted what would happen.”

Tony turned hard eyes on him, “ _Someone_ should have been able to. Does SHIELD seriously not give a damn? He’s a global terrorist!” With each word, Tony pressed closer, getting in Loki’s face. He didn’t wait for an answer before pulling back abruptly. “If they won’t _I_ will.”

“Tony,” Loki started in warning.

“No. I’m doing this. He doesn’t get away with hurting innocent people. And once I’m done, Nick and I are gonna have a _long_ talk on what the hell his priorities are,” Tony snarled, shoulders heaving. He didn’t leave straight away and for a brief moment, Loki thought Tony was taking a deep breath, calming down and re-evaluating. However the next words from Tony’s mouth weren’t what Loki expected. “Can I ask you a favour? Can you stay with Happy?”

Loki’s brows furrowed. “Why?”

“If Happy was on to something, then they might come by for loose ends. Or come for him in reaction to what I’m about to do.”

“Tony, please. Just stop and think for a moment,” Loki tried, reaching out again only for Tony to slap his hand away.

“I’m done thinking, Loki. I know what I’m gonna do. I am _not_ afraid of this bastard.”

Loki swallowed, pulling his hand close, the other one coming up to cradle it gently. “I never accused you of that.”

“I can do something to _help_. To end this,” Tony pressed, “Why are you fighting me on this?”

Striding past Tony, Loki sank down in the chair by Happy’s bedside, a heavy sigh escaping him. Worrying for Tony’s safety, though the truth, obviously wasn’t going to do anything but spike Tony’s ire. Head down, one hand shielding his face from Tony, he said, “I… I don’t _want_ to fight you. I just want you to put your wellbeing up a few rungs.”

“I’m _Iron Man_.”

“I know.”

“I have to do this.”

Loki didn’t look up. “Then go.” Even though he knew Tony would leave, the sound of the door slipping shut and Tony’s footsteps fading still made Loki’s chest tighten and a cold knot twist in his stomach.

He would have almost preferred a shouting match than the news alerts that filled up his phone notifications.

* * *

“What, _the hell_ , Laufeyson?”

Looking up Loki greeted softly, “Director.”

“Why are you here, not managing Stark?”

“You should know well, Director. Tony cannot be managed.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” Fury shot, “You could have that man wrapped around your little finger if you wanted. And I’m pretty sure him giving your home address to the Mandarin was _not_ what you wanted.” Fury came to a stop by the far wall beside Happy’s bed, leaning against in a way that allowed him to see out the door and down the hallway. “He should have at least called for backup.”

Loki didn’t reply, turning his gaze back to his lap where he had been twisting and picking at the flesh of his hand since the clip of Tony’s impromptu press conference more than a few hours ago now, scabs and faint traces of blood visible on Loki’s pale skin.

“Where is Stark?”

“Malibu,” Loki replied after a moment, hands stilling briefly.

“And you aren’t there because..?”

Loki nodded his head at Happy, who was still unconscious. “Tony asked me to watch him.”

“And I asked you to watch Stark. Keep him from doing something reckless.”

“We’re going to go round in circles about this,” Loki noted without inflection.

“Cut the crap, Loki,” Fury bit. “What the hell is going on with you and Stark?” He jerked his head at Happy. “He could have Stark security on this guy and you with him in Malibu. What the hell is this?”

“His hero complex rearing its head again,” Loki replied bitterly, shifting to slouch in his seat, which he had moved some time ago to watch the other end of the hall from Fury. “He keeps asking if SHIELD are on the Mandarin and I’ve been avoiding the questions, so he took the matter into his own hands once it became even vaguely personal.”

Fury arched an eyebrow, “So that’s what the security breaches were in aid of.”

“You should be flattered he thinks there’s no pie SHIELD doesn’t have its fingers in.” Loki sighed, taking a second before narrowing his gaze at Fury. “It seems Tony’s initial assessment for the Avengers Initiative was correct.”

“And yet I was hoping having a measured individual like yourself paired with him that Stark would temper.”

Loki laughed mirthlessly. “I am anything but measured.”

Fury hummed softly in agreement. “Compromised comes to mind.” He pushed off from the wall. “I’ll make contact at the end of the week. In the meantime, consider yourself suspended.” He held out a hand, “ID.” Loki waved a hand, releasing the various SHIELD provided identifications he owned from their pocket dimension and passed them through the air to Fury with a flick of a finger.

Unperturbed, Fury took the documents and left with a swish of his coattails.

When Loki robbed the unconscious Happy of his Downton Abbey rerun and saw the smoking remains of the Malibu house on the news that evening, Loki didn’t shed a tear. For the longest moment, he felt very little. Then, as he stood to pour himself a glass of water from Happy’s bedside, he reconsidered the glass, dipping a finger into the liquid, a shimmer of magic turning the clear liquid amber. “Stupid, _stupid_ man,” Loki muttered to himself, downing the drink and flopping back into his chair.

He didn’t sleep that night.

Or the next.

But Loki did notice the voicemail left on the Stark secure server for him.

“ _Hey, Loki it’s me_ ,” Tony’s voice crackled over the speaker, the quality of the call more static than anything. “ _I’ve got a lot of apologies to make and not a lot of time. So… first off, I’m sorry. You were right I was being… stupid and selfish and inviting an air strike on our house was probably the worst idea ever. And I probably blew up your gift. Shit. Sorry._ ” Tony groaned, took a moment before he spoke again. “ _And, I’m sorry but I can’t come back yet. I just stole a poncho from a wooden Indian, JARVIS is… not in a good way, but… please, put up with me a little longer? I’m looking into a lead and I would feel a thousand times better knowing that you’re okay and keeping Happy safe._ ”

“Compromised is putting it lightly,” Loki mused, leaving his own message on the server for Tony to find once he got himself up and running again. “ _I’m with Happy. Never left. Don’t forget there’s more than Iron Man on the team now, you don’t have to go it alone._ ”

* * *

It was another two days before Loki heard from Tony. During that time, Loki had kept vigil over Happy, particularly when any medical staff came in to check on him. Any anger Loki still felt towards Tony for his recklessness or at himself for his own inaction had faded into grateful relief the second he saw Tony’s caller ID on his screen.

“ _Hey, Lokes, we should be good on the Mandarin problem now_ ,” Tony said, sounding thoroughly exhausted.

“Oh? Did you kick his arse?” Loki asked mildly, rising to glance up and down the hall from Happy’s hospital room door. He had been checking the hall regularly for suspicious individuals but so far nothing and if Tony was correct, there never would be.

“ _Uh. Kinda?_ ” Tony’s voice rose a pitch at the end. “ _Pepper hit him with a metal beam then exploded him._ ”

Loki’s eyebrows furrowed. “Are you sure? Did you hit your head?”

“ _Yes and yes. And my back, and my hip, and I nearly had my leg cut off,_ ” Tony reeled off.

Undeterred, Loki pressed. “Pepper killed a terrorist? The same Pepper who apologises when she throws pens?”

“ _Hard to believe, I know_ ,” Tony hummed. “ _So let me start at the top._ ” Slowly Tony began to explain his discoveries over the last couple of days, from the assault on the Malibu house to Tennessee and the forcibly enhanced humans that were also walking bombs thanks to Extremis and the Fake Mandarin, to Killian’s plot to kill the President and how the Vice President was sympathetic to Extremis and finally, to the battle and how being injected with Extremis had probably saved Pepper’s life. “ _We’re heading to the Tower and I’m gonna run some scans but Extremis is still hugely unstable even if Pepper didn’t want to be returned to normal_ ,” Tony said. “ _Do you think you can help me manage her core temperature? I’d be looking for Bruce’s help too, but it seems he and Romanoff are out of town together._ ”

“You said the Extremis-based explosions reached temperatures of three-thousand degrees,” Loki pointed out. “I’m not convinced I can do much about that even my Jotun form.” He sat back heavily in the chair beside Happy’s bed, rubbing his face with one hand.

“ _Yeah, but for the most part she’s regulating. I just need someone there to make sure I’m not putting lives at risk while I try help counteract Extremis and normalise her biology._ ”

“Alright,” Loki agreed with a sigh. “I’ll come and do what I can.”

Tony’s voice was full of relief. “ _Great. How’s Happy_?”

“No change.” Still looked like death, still intubated, still playing Downton Abbey on the TV. “What’s your ETA on the Tower?”

“ _An hour._ ”

Arrangements were made and Loki was relieved of his guard duty of Happy before making his way through New York to Avengers Tower, heading directly for the lab.

Looking up from the monitor at the sound of the glass doors to the lab opening, Tony smiled at Loki before his eyes widened. “You look exhausted.”

“And yet I am still the sexier man,” Loki drawled easily, smiling. His gaze flickered over Tony, taking in the welts, bruises and cuts and the awful black eye. He was at least wearing clean clothes though, likely at Pepper’s insistence. “How’s Pepper?” he asked, looking from Tony to the woman in question in the next room over, who was pulling a robe on to cover the leggings and sports bra she wore underneath.

“Scan’s just completed. It’s… gonna take a while. I’ve got JARVIS scanning around for biology seminars and papers on reproductive tissue as well as appropriating all Extremis data.” Tony sighed, sagging beside him. Glancing over, Loki reached out and put his arm around Tony’s shoulders, pulling Tony to lean against him.

“When was the last time you slept?”

“Pot, kettle,” Tony muttered into his shirt even as he wrapped his arms around Loki. “Actually, when was the last time you showered?”

“I cannot smell _that_ bad.” He frowned as Tony loudly sniffed him. “Stop that.”

“Pep! Loki hasn’t showered either!” Tony declared, pulling away to plead his case to Pepper, who deflated in the doorway, rolling her eyes.

“If you follow that up with that the three of us should get one together I might have to rethink not learning how to breath fire,” she told him, raising her hand to rub at one temple.

Loki’s brows furrowed, “Breathing fire?”

“Yeah, Rhodey said Killian did it. Scared the pants out of him and the bald asshole that threatened Harley,” Tony supplied. “And… nnnnnoooo. Wasn’t going to suggest that.”

Rolling his eyes, Loki pointed in the vague direction of the elevator. “How about we all go upstairs take showers – _separately_ ,” he added with a firm look at Tony. “Get some clean clothes and see where we’re at?”

Where they were at, a little over two hours later, was sat at the penthouse bar with a series of scans of Pepper’s body visible on holoscreens. Tony muttered to himself, fiddling with scans and running simulations while Pepper nursed a gin and tonic and tried to keep her calm, Loki making light conversation with her in an attempt at distraction.

“Why don’t you lie down? Try get some sleep?” Loki suggested noticing Pepper was shaking slightly, nerves clearly frazzled. She shook her head.

“Lokes has a point, Pep,” Tony said, gaze flickering up to catch hers before returning to his screen. “This might take a while.”

Reaching out, Loki waited until Pepper acknowledged the movement before putting a hand lightly on her upper arm. “I can keep an eye on you while you sleep, if you want?”

“Careful there, Edward Cullen,” she smiled weakly before shaking her head. “I don’t think I could sleep even if I wanted to right now.”

He returned the smile sympathetically, looking between the two humans before sighing, “In that case, I’ll be the pragmatic one and nap. Wake me if you need me.” He waited until Tony looked up before adding, “And after, _you_ are sleeping. Even if I have to choke you into unconsciousness.”

Tony barked out a laugh. “I’d rather you magicked me to sleep if you’re going to force me.”

Taking to the sofa, Loki shifted to his Jotun skin with a yawn, on the chance he should be rudely awoken and need to react quickly. Though his back was to Pepper, he could hear her gasp in surprise.

Pepper’s voice lowered, “I know you said he was an alien and blue but…”

“But you weren’t imagining literally blue and giant?” Tony guessed. “If you wanna go over, I don’t think he’d mind.”

“I wasn’t expecting the horns.”

“They make for great handholds,” Tony replied, earning a snort from Loki.

Sleep came quickly, now being the first opportunity in almost a week that he’d been able to lie down and close his eyes for a few moments. When Loki awoke some time later it was to hushed voices beside him and something warm touching his hand.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure what was happening, and chose to remain still and limp, feigning sleep as he listened.

“Come on, it’s fine,” Tony was saying, “if the sofa catches fire, there’s sprinklers.”

“But what if I burn Loki?” That was Pepper, which jolted Loki’s brain into gear. Opening his eyes, he saw Pepper’s usually blue gaze was tainted orange, flickering like fire, the same colour lighting her core which was definitely irregular for humans.

“Pep, it’ll be fine. His home planet is a kelvin. His touch should cool you down then we can regulate.”

Loki hummed in agreement, drawing the attention of the two who stood beside the sofa. “Worst comes to worst I get a bit of heatstroke,” Loki soothed. As it was, Loki still wasn’t sure he could help Pepper, and worse things could happen to Loki if he became too warm, but he ignored his worries. If Loki got too hot, only he would be affected. If Pepper got too hot and exploded, thousands could be unintentionally killed.

Shifting his fingers from under Tony’s and reaching out, Loki put the back of his hand to Pepper’s warm middle. To him, she was boiling and it was incredibly unpleasant. Pepper for her part shuddered, sucking in a breath and took a step back, putting herself out of Loki’s immediate reach. The orange in her eyes and chest rippled, running across her face.

“Pep?” Tony pressed gently. “Are you okay?”

Leaving his hand out, Loki turned it palm up and pushed himself into a sitting position. “It’s alright, Pepper, I will not hurt you.”

Pursing her lips, Pepper lowered her gaze. The orange flickered again, this time looking like it pained her, as Pepper winced, curling in on herself slightly. Making the decision for her, Loki shifted and pulled Pepper onto his lap, one hand covering her core and put the other on her head. He grimaced, touching Pepper was like grabbing a hot oven tray and it seemed the opposing temperature was no more comfortable for Pepper. Loki could hear Tony speaking, but not make out the words over his own intense focus on Pepper and their inner temperatures. Long moments passed before the heat in her seemed to die down, fading and leaving both of them exhausted and sweating.

Loki relaxed his arms and fell to the side, back to the cushion he’d laid his head on earlier, breathing heavily while Pepper scooted off to the far end of the sofa, curling in on herself, arms wrapping around her knees. Catching movement in his peripheral, Loki flickered his gaze to it, finding Tony fretting, looking between Loki and Pepper helplessly.

“Tony,” he croaked softly, startling the other man. “Can you make sure I didn’t burn Pepper?”

“I’m fine,” Pepper said from her corner, her voice sounding like a sob. Her shoulders shuddered, Loki’s heart panged in sympathy.

“ _Her core temperature has returned to slightly above normal, which is consistent with the baselines of other Extremis individuals,_ ” JARVIS noted, “ _Though Loki’s is still several degrees below freezing and I would deduce neither seems particularly well to me_.”

Loki groaned, “Thank you, JARVIS. How about you go play with your brothers?”

“ _Dum-E and U are currently offline_ ,” JARVIS said in the closest thing to a snap the AI could currently produce.

“Butterfingers isn’t.”

“ _Actually, he short circuited himself an hour ago trying to work the smoothie maker in the R &D department._”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Tony frowned, the distraction grounding him as irritation for Butterfingers’s action warred with his concern for the robot and the state of the R&D floor the smoothie maker was in.

“Go check on him,” Loki instructed softly.

“But-”

“Pepper’s temperature is down and mine will regulate in a moment, I just need a minute,” he assured.

Tony still looked like he wanted to argue, but before he spoke up, Pepper did. “I’m good now, Tony,” she said, her voice more level. She shot him a soft smile. “JARVIS and I can keep an eye on Loki for you.”

The engineer deflated a little, looking to Loki. “You sure you’ll be alright?” Loki nodded. “Alright. I’ll be back soon.”

“Thank you,” Loki said softly once Tony had disappeared into the elevator, casting his gaze back over to Pepper.

She shot him a half smile. “I should be the one thanking you. I…” she looked away. “If you hadn’t acted then, the-the tower…”

He grunted, sitting up and shuffling over, conjuring a handkerchief to hand to Pepper. “If anything _had_ happened, it would not have been your fault,” he told her calmly as she dabbed at her eyes.

“But I – oh my god, your _hands_!” Pepper cut herself off, clapping a hand over her mouth and gawking at Loki’s palms.

Looking down, Loki saw the angry purple welts of blisters, many of them burst and bleeding. Snapping his gaze to Pepper, he could just about see the stains of his blood on her shirt. Her hair seemed to have been spared at least.

Pepper, for her part, sprang up and was pulling out the first aid kit before Loki had properly registered that he was injured and in pain. And now that he’d caught sight of his hands, the dull throb he’d felt from them was exponentially worse.

Gritting his teeth, Loki took a few slow breaths holding himself carefully until Pepper reappeared at his side, reaching out tentatively to touch the back of his hand. “Do I feel okay?”

“Little warmer than I’m used to,” he said with a grin. “And me?”

“It’s like fingering an ice cube, but I kind of… can’t be hurt right now so…” she drifted off with a shrug. “Are you allergic to latex or anything?”

Loki shook his head, “Nothing medical.”

“Food?” Pepper guessed as she pulled one of his hands close to swab and wrap.

“Peaches.”

“Let me guess, Tony doesn’t remember?” She was grinning, though obviously still salty that Tony continued to remember strawberries were important to Pepper but not that it was because she was allergic to them.

“I can’t remember if it’s come up honestly.” It must have done at some point but Loki had made sure JARVIS knew never to order them for the Malibu house unless Tony wanted them for himself and then thought nothing more of it. “But it is an annoying ingredient to check for.”

Pepper hummed, “Strawberry’s worse, it’s used as a natural colourant in foods.”

“Yes. I admit, I do not understand the fascination with pink food,” Loki agreed with furrowed brows. “The chocolate obsession however, I completely understand. Chocolate is the most amazing food I have ever consumed.”

“W-what?” Pepper chuckled, doubling over slightly. “Chocolate? Really?” She pulled back to snicker into the back of her hand. “Don’t you have an alien equivalent?”

“No, As either roast meat or eat fruit and Jotnar salt everything within an inch of its life.” There were some minor exceptions, but as far as culinary dishes went, Loki firmly believed Earth had the best to offer. “My love of chocolate is known throughout the office.”

“Oh? Is that what we call SHIELD now? The office?” she asked with a smirk, taking his hand again to finish wrapping his hand and tie off the bandage. “Do they bring you souvenirs?”

Loki snorted. “Yes, actually. It’s down as the ‘Loki tax’ on the expense receipts.”

Pepper’s eyes bugged in disbelief, “And Fury signs off on that?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he smiled. “But I like to think so.”

They settled back against the sofa cushions, Loki using a few gestures to get them drinks.

“Handy,” Pepper praised, her smile shaky but thankful.

“If it unnerves you, let me know,” Loki told her softly, eyes slipping closed as he tilted his head back towards the ceiling. “I’m aware magic is more than a little unusual.”

“So are lava humans and whatever you are,” she replied flippantly. “I… sorry, that was rude. I didn’t mean it like that.”

He waved a hand in vague dismissal. “I’m a Jotun. Frost Giant. Anything you call me I’ve likely heard before.”

“Do Jotun have Christmas?”

“Not as such. We have a winter feast but present giving is not locked to a particular time of year.” He tilted his head to view Pepper from the corner of his eye. “What did Tony get you?”

“A toy rabbit. Sent to the office. It’s so big it won’t fit through the door. I hate it,” she added with a huff, shaking her head. “You?”

“Not a bloody clue. I’ve not been home since a week before the explosion.”

“Be thankful, if it was anything like that rabbit it was genuinely hideous.” Loki scoffed, smirking some as he saw a true smile pulling at Pepper’s lips.

By the end of the week, Loki’s arms and chest were swathed in bandages, the Vice President of the United States was being tried for treason, Trevor Slattery had been revealed as the Mandarin and imprisoned, Pepper’s DNA was blessedly normalised and Rhodey had managed to get War Machine his old branding back. Happy had woken up from his coma and was recovering well, Pepper checking in on him before leaving to be with her family for what remained of the holiday period, while Tony and Loki finished off the parts of Dead or Alive’s discography they had missed while helping Pepper.

“Right Round is still the best,” Loki argued as Never Marry an Idol played.

Tony groaned, “Right Round is Flo Rida. The Dead or Alive one is ‘You Spin Me Round’.” Shifting on the penthouse sofa, Tony wiggled his way under Loki’s arm, stretching his legs out along the cushions.

“I prefer their cover of That’s The Way I Like It myself,” drawled a voice from the shadows.

“Jesus Fucking Christ!” Tony startled, locking his gaze on Fury before demanding, “JARVIS _why_ is there a spy in my penthouse?!”

Chuckling, Fury peeled himself away from the wall to sit on the opposite sofa. “Think of it as payback for you appropriating our terrorism info,” Fury said, pointing a finger at the couple. “Whiskey and ‘jamas, good choice.”

Tony’s lip curled into a defensive sneer, “Sleepover isn’t extended to you. What, do you _want,_ Nick?”

“Peace, Stark. I’m here to return some things to Loki,” the director replied, reaching into his coat pocket and placing Loki’s ID’s on the coffee table

Loki looked down at them, remaining still as Tony shifted forward curiously to peruse them. “Are you sure? I’m compromised.”

"Having family, not having family, that doesn't make you compromised," Fury mused. "To me, they are essentially the same. It's the action you take when that situation changes."

"Oh yeah?" Tony placed the ID's back on the table, resettled in an upright position on the sofa, eyebrows shifting.

"Loki generally does what the people he seeks approval from ask," Fury began as though Loki wasn’t sat in front of him. "He doesn’t generally budge from your whims, Stark. Natasha is the same. She's pretty much open to any request, and though the persona makes for a good agent, it does leave me wondering when the hound will bite."

"When you mistreat them first usually," replied Tony. "But they're people, Nick, not dogs."

"Abandonment is a form of mistreatment. You left, Stark, and though I grant you it was short-lived, it gave me insight. Loki is the type to internalise. Arguably I'd prefer explosive," he added with a sharp look between the two men. "Those types let you know when something is wrong straight away, but internalising anger, sadness, stress, et cetera, that becomes much worse when it all goes to hell. I made that mistake on the hellicarrier. After your interactions with the Asgardians, I thought you the type to fly into a rage, Loki, and I'm sorry. I took your authority because I expected you to firstly find Stark and then the Mandarin. But you refrained. Held position. Were reliable. And though it may one day bite me in the ass, I believe you are still an asset. So, I return what I took and offer my apologies.”

Loki for his part shrugged a shoulder when Fury’s eye shifted to him. “I’m not offended. But I’m also not blind to your insinuation. You plan to watch me closer since it will not be so apparent as you had hoped if my priorities change.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you two tried harder to keep each other out of trouble.”

“Rude,” Tony accused shrewdly, getting up and heading for the bar. He returned with a third glass of whiskey and placed it on the coffee table before Fury with a clink of glass on glass. "How about this? When I ask 'is anyone handling the fucking terrorist?' I get a fucking answer. Doesn't have to mobilize the Avengers. I just need to know whether you consider petty terrorism worth your time."

Fury leaned forward to take the glass. “Add a consultation on repulsor technology for the Hellicarriers and we can make a deal.”

“Great. Done.” Tony chinked their glasses together. “Now drink your shot and get out via whichever hole you crawled in here through. It’s Christmas and last time I checked my name was Stark, not Scrooge. All ghosts are to vamoose before I call an exorcist.” He slipped back into his earlier position, leaning against Loki’s side, the Jotun’s arm gingerly around him.

“Are you sure you aren’t Scrooge?” Loki asked once Fury had left them. “Tiny Tim certainly got a good gift.”

“Harley?” Tony smiled bashfully. “I know it was a bit overboard, but the kid really did help me out. And I’m gonna talk to Pepper in the New Year about enrichment programmes. For a kid out in the sticks, he knew his stuff, and I doubt he’s the only one. If I can help them get into decent colleges or help them into dev positions with SI or a subsidiary, I think that could be good. We need more good. Less Killians.”

Loki gave Tony as much of a gentle squeeze as his burns allowed. “Less Killians does sound like a good thing. Though, having mentioned giving,” he winced, fingers struggling to make the gesture to open his pocket dimension under the bandages. Big brown eyes followed the movement, reaching out for the slim black box Loki had conjured.

“Did you get me another thing or did it not burn?”

“Open it and find out.” He held back a snort when Tony’s eye bugged at the sight of the dagger. “My daggers are forged from a metal called Uru. It absorbs magic like a sponge, which makes it great for enchanting, but Uru is also incredibly durable. I thought perhaps examining space metal might keep you busy for a while.”

“How many of these do you have?”

“More than I should, but less than you think,” he smirked. “I’d have offered one of my bracelets as they are the same metal, but they were gifts from Jotunheim and I’m still very attached to their sentiment.”

Tony shook his head, raising one hand. “Hey, no. Totally fine! I… Okay, I didn’t think about what your daggers or anything were made from, but you just… giving me one of your weapons? That’s like me handing you an arc reactor. It’s… insane, Loki.” He looked down at the blade still in the box on a bed of dark satin, before looking back to Loki. “Are you _sure_ you want me to have this? I’m more than happy just borrowing if you want to let me examine it.”

“I trust you, Tony.” It felt strange to say aloud, but as the words rolled off of his tongue, Loki couldn’t find a lie in them. “And a gift you can only borrow is lousy. Just don’t stab me with it alright?” he chuckled, arching forward to kiss Tony on the temple.


	9. The Convergence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly early update. I'm expecting a very busy Monday and I'd rather update early than late.
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos and comments, as always they make my day to read them ^_^
> 
> *slight footnote* Since the Malibu house was blown up, Tony and Loki have been living in Avengers Tower full-time for the last 11 months while it's rebuilt. Dum-E and U are also rebuilt and chilling in the Tower and Tony (unlike in Iron Man 3) has not had his arc reactor removed at this time.

**-November 2013, Avenger’s Tower-**

“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” Tony wondered, slipping into the seat beside Loki’s in the kitchen. “Other than it’s a food day,” he noted, eyeing Loki’s bowl of yoghurt. Clint yawned and turned the page in his paper while he waited for the coffee machine to hurry up.

“It’s also a work day,” Loki said shrugging a shoulder, offering Tony his Starkphone, a video already loaded up.

“Is that Selvig?!”

“Yep,” said Clint without looking up. “His dick is all over YouTube.”

“They think it might be a side effect of his interaction with the sceptre or Tesseract,” Loki explained, getting up to fetch two mugs of coffee once Clint had shuffled off with his own. “As the only alien contact SHIELD has, I’m going over to London to speak with Doctor Selvig and assess him to the best of my ability.”

“And I’m going in for a second psyche evaluation,” Clint grumbled. Loki shot him a sympathetic look.

“The two events could be entirely unrelated,” Loki tried, “And we all have regular check-ups.”

Clint frowned, “Nice try, Smurfette, it still doesn’t make them suck any less.”

“So, when do you leave?” Tony asked, shifting the topic along, thanking Loki as he passed him his coffee.

“Once I’m done with breakfast. Doctor Selvig is currently in police custody, and England is five hours ahead so it’s already lunchtime there, which means I should have little issue gaining visitation.”

Tony nodded. “What do you do if he’s uh… away with the fairies?”

“I can run some diagnostic spells, but that is probably the extent of it.” Loki took a long drag of coffee, “The best I can do without knowing anything is talk to him and then if it was the events from New York, try get him professional help.” He downed the rest of the coffee and stood. “I don’t know when I will be back.”

“That’s fine, I have board meetings with Stark Industries anyway,” Tony waved a hand. “Give me a call if you need anything SHIELD can’t provide.” He tilted his head up as Loki leaned down to peck him on the lips.

Taking his bowl and mug to the sink, Loki offered Clint a wave before heading to the door, “See you both later.”

“Later, Lokes.”

“Bye, Boo. Bring me back an ugly souvenir!”

While Loki was free to conjure and dismiss items at will, the humans were generally less tolerant about him teleporting, preferring he at least use doorways to indicate comings and goings. It was a strange request, but one Loki was willing to comply with, holding off on pulling at his magic until he had passed through the threshold of one doorway and usually taking care to arrive at another, knocking on the door to announce his presence.

This time however, Loki reappeared in an alleyway near Charing Cross station and followed the directions on his phone to the police station holding Erik Selvig.

* * *

“So are you like… FBI or something?” the policeman asked, looking at Loki’s identification badge.

“Something like, yes. I just want to ask him some questions, find out why he thought being naked and terrorising tourists with science was a good idea.” Loki flashed the man his work smile, a calm measured expression designed to put others at ease.

It seemed to work for the man accepted Loki’s reasoning and led Loki down the corridor to a mess hall. “Wait here, please.” The policeman entered the room and Loki looked through the window, observing Doctor Selvig drawing on a chalkboard, the Jotun’s eyes widening as he recognised the illustration as a simplified version of the nine realms along with… a _lot_ of mathematics.

“At least this is unlikely to be Tesseract related madness,” Loki sighed, taking a breath and composing himself as the policeman retrieved Selvig and brought him out of the room.

“Doctor Selvig,” Loki greeted politely, bowing his head.

“Hello,” the man replied guardedly. “They said you were with SHIELD?”

Loki nodded, “Yes, would you mind sitting down with me and answering some questions?”

Selvig mumbled an agreement and the policeman showed them to an empty room before leaving them alone.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” Selvig said without preamble.

Sitting down, Loki pulled out his badge and shook his head, “Not at all, Doctor Selvig.” He flipped open the leather binding on the identification and slid it between them so that Selvig could see.

“Loki… Laufeyson?” Selvig looked from the badge to Loki himself. “Like… Thor and Odin and the rest?”

“Exactly so. Your planet’s myth is my reality.” Loki smiled gently, “I’m glad we do not have to have the awkward conversation where I try and disway you from the notion that my parents are just _really_ into mythology.”

“Well I was kidnapped by an alien a year ago. I’m… rather open to believing a lot,” Selvig replied heavily, slumping in the chair opposite. “So, what brings the God of Mischief to pretend to be a SHIELD agent?”

“Well, for starters, I’m not pretending. I am fully employed. But,” Loki waved a hand and a manila envelope appeared in his hand, Selvig inhaling sharply at the use of magic, “I’m here to ask about the incident at Stonehenge.” He opened the envelope and showed Selvig the pictures, most blurring the man’s nethers or politely covering him with black censor bars.

Selvig started from the top in a clear concise manner and although Loki didn’t understand all of what was being said, he followed along easily enough, stroking his chin in thought. “And those calculations on the blackboard. They were from memory?”

“Yes, pretty much. I know a lot of it is theoretical, but the Tesseract. While I was working with it I saw things. Things I couldn’t imagine. I can see it still, in the back of my mind, how the orbiting works. The realms, they’re going to overlap I know it. It shouldn’t be long before less sophisticated equipment is able to register anomalies too.” He stared at Loki repeating, “You think I’m mad don’t you?”

“Not at all. The last Convergence happened before I was born, but I remember being told about it. Asgard mentions it briefly in their history as it is the reason they went to war with the Dark Elves,” Loki replied, frowning a little as he thought it over, “The disturbances shouldn’t cause an issue, though. It’s… essentially like a special eclipse. The worlds will just pass harmlessly over each other.”

“Except that eventually the minute shifts each planet makes while orbiting will cause them to become more likely to collide during a Convergence,” Selvig argued, gesticulating as he spoke. “That’s what my machines were for. I was planning to locate the centre of the Convergence and plant my machines in the ground, safely manipulating the Earth so a collision would not occur.”

Loki quirked an eyebrow, “You believe the shift in the planets significant enough this time around to cause a collision?”

“I’m not sure, but Earth has developed a lot in the last hundred years alone, there’s no telling what this will do to our technology and if the ripples preceding the Convergence end up at a level where people could come to harm or end up on the wrong realm? That’s not safe.” He shook his head.

“You do have a point there,” Loki agreed reluctantly, leaning back in his chair and thinking that problem over. Silence settled over the two men, each lost in their own thoughts. Closing his eyes, Loki stretched his senses out, feeling vague disturbances in the area; minor tears that he could only find because he was looking for them, feeling them out as he had found the pathways between realms in Asgard and Jotunheim. These were unstable ripples, but they would pass and they didn’t seem too large. Eventually, Loki broke the silence. “I’ll speak with the officers and see about your release. Do you have somewhere safe to go?”

“I’m here with Doctor Jane Foster and her intern. We’re uh, staying at her Mother’s place I think,” Selvig confirmed.

Loki nodded and pulled out a notepad, writing his phone number on it. “For the moment, I would appreciate it if you didn’t try to handle this yourself. I’ll look into it my end and you are free to continue monitoring, but call me if something occurs. It would at the very least stop you getting arrested again.”

He tore the page off and slid it towards Selvig before collecting his SHIELD ID and vanishing the manila envelope and pictures with a wave of his hand. Selvig nodded, folding the paper once and pocketing it. “Very well. And uh, thank you for believing me.”

“And you for believing me,” Loki said with a smile.

Once he’d gotten Selvig released and watched him drive away in a taxi, Loki headed to the stop over location SHIELD had provided, checking the room for bugs and peepholes before filing his report on the SHIELD secure server. After a short conversation with Fury, in which he was instructed to continue keeping an eye on Selvig’s operation (along with a firm insistence that SHIELD’s various satellites had detected no anomalies in Earth’s surrounding orbit), Loki ordered dinner and settled in for an evening of social media hunting, hoping to find videos of the rifts. Though if he found nothing of the sort that would be equally good in Loki’s book.

He video called Tony after the first hour nearly bored him to sleep, putting the window into the corner of his laptop screen so Loki could multitask, scrolling through searches and keywords while devouring his meal.

“ _So, let me see if I’m getting this right_ ,” Tony started, gesticulating vaguely with his sandwich. “ _You and Selvig think the Nine Realms are heading towards an equinox or else the universe’s equivalent of a pile-on and… this is a repeat occurrence?_ ”

“Mhmm,” Loki poked at his noodle box. “The Convergence is rare but known. A bit like witnessing Halley’s Comet.”

“ _Minus the apparent ripples in the universe_ ,” Tony frowned. “ _Are those portals safe_?”

“They’ll disappear in a few days at most, the Convergence doesn’t last long, then it is thousands of years to the next,” Loki assured. “I’m trying to see if anyone’s found any portals yet, if only because it’s easier to search the web than wander around with dousing rods.”

“ _So you know where some are_?”

“A couple. I can feel them, but only because I know what to look for. And only the close ones.”

“ _And these lead to other realms_?”

Loki hummed chopsticks halfway to his mouth, the picture of calm and relaxed before he suddenly stiffened. Loki made a choking sound, lurching forward as his stomach churned, a chill running through him.

“ _Loki_?!” Tony’s chair scraped back, leaning into the camera for all the good it did as Loki fell out of shot, tumbling to the floor his food spilling over the carpet. “ _Lokes, talk to me! Are you okay?_ ”

Swallowing bile, Loki grit, “S-something’s happened. Something… big.” He didn’t have any words for it. Eyes flickering as his thoughts whirled, Loki tried to figure out what was going on.

“ _What? What happened_?”

Snaking a hand around his middle, Loki slowly righted himself. “Magic,” he managed. “It… it felt like magic.” That wasn’t quite right though. It was similar but distinct, like a tidal wave against his senses. He gasped as he stomach clenched again, curling into himself.

“ _Are you okay_?”

“Yes,” Loki groaned softly. “It’s… settling.” He coughed harshly and stood on shaking legs to rinse his mouth out. He slipped back into his chair pale and clammy but as much as he wanted to hang up on Tony and slowly work out what was going on, he could see Tony contemplating digitizing himself and coming through the computer screen or else suiting up and flying over. Probably with the Avengers in tow. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “I just need a minute.”

“ _Try a decade, you look like you just shat your intestines out all over the floor._ ”

Loki cast a glance to the floor, rubbing the bridge of his nose at the mess of noodles and sauce. “It looks like I shat my intestines out.”

“ _Not funny, Boo_ ,” Tony frowned. “ _What even was that? You’ve never reacted like that before._ ”

Shaking his head, Loki rubbed his arms, working the chill out. He turned to his phone as it buzzed on the table by the bed. “I’ve no idea, but I think someone might.”

Getting up, Loki grabbed his phone. Answering it, he pressed the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”

“ _Agent Laufeyson? This is Doctor Erik Selvig._ ”

Feigning ignorance, he asked, “Has something occurred?”

“ _Something, yes. You remember I said I was here working with Jane Foster_?” Loki hummed. “ _She and the people she was with have been arrested for trespassing. Before that however, Jane went missing for five hours. I just got a call from Darcy – Jane’s intern. She said something is wrong with Jane. Whenever someone touches her, a burst of energy is released._ ”

“Well that is unsettling. Do you know where she is being held? I’ll head over now,” Loki said, already grabbing a pen and his notepad, scribbling the address down as Selvig told it to him.

“ _You’re sure she’s going to be okay_?”

“I’ll do what I can, Doctor Selvig.” He hung up and glanced to Tony. “It’s possible one of Doctor Selvig’s associates has found something they should not have. I need to go.”

Tony nodded, “ _You uh, should wash your face or get some make up on_ ,” he advised, “ _You still look pretty ill_.”

“I love you too,” Loki scoffed, shaking his head. Tony was probably right though. “I’ll fix it. Bye, Tony.”

“ _Good luck, Boo. Love you._ ”

* * *

The London police were neither happy to be housing an erratic astrophysicist that appeared to be releasing her own personal electro-magnetic pulses, nor did they want to hand Jane over to Loki when he arrived at the station barely ten minutes later. Irritated, he played along with protocols, if only because teleporting to Jane and extracting her when he didn’t know what was causing the energy pulses was a terrible idea.

While he waited to take Jane, the two others that had been with her were released into his custody. One Darcy Lewis and Ian Boothby.

Darcy was ball of anxiety that seemed to tense up more when she spotted Loki, “Oh god, it’s the Feds. We’re so screwed.”

“Actually I would be closer to Homeland Security,” Loki said mildly, gesturing to the horrid plastic seating beside him in the station’s waiting room. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me what happened?”

“You’re British?” she frowned, cocking her head at Loki’s accent before stabbing a finger at him, eyes wide. “You’re MI6!”

“MI6 is fictional. MI5 isn’t though,” Loki noted. “But I am neither. Please, sit.”

Ian’s eyes narrowed, the tall, lanky man frowning warily. “So who _are_ you then?”

“I am Agent Loki Laufeyson with the Strategic Homeland Intelligence and Espionage Logistics Division. To avoid having to ever make me repeat that, feel free to refer to the organisation as SHIELD,” said Loki. “I was speaking to Doctor Selvig earlier this morning, he called me here as he believes his research and Doctor Foster’s disappearance are linked.”

“You know Erik?” Darcy’s eyebrows knitted together as she slumped into the chair beside Loki. “Is he okay?”

“Yes, he was in police custody too due to uh… exposing himself at Stonehenge,” Loki explained. “He’s perfectly sound, minus the odd method of attention gathering and should be waiting at your base of operations.”

She nodded, hunching into her scarf, “I was trying to call him for ages, he… just disappeared one day without saying anything and then all the machines and detectors went haywire. Jane was on a date but… well I figured she’d want to know.” Darcy waved her hand dismissively before the pale limb slipped back into her coat sleeve. “Anyway, the signal led us to a warehouse. There were a bunch of kids inside and the gravity was all weird.”

“Weird?” Loki pressed.

“Yeah, floating lorries and a looping portal in a stairwell,” Ian provided.

Darcy nodded her head, pointing at Ian. “Yeah, what he said. The kids were saying some stuff comes back and other things don’t. We tried bottles, shoes. Ian lost the car keys.” Ian blushed deeply, ducking his head and murmuring an apology. “And then… Jane started zoning out. She stumbled and just… vanished. So me, Ian and the kids went looking for her, but after almost three hours and nothing, and her phone not working we uh, called the police and then…here,” she finished lamely. “I used our phone call to try Erik one last time and was so relieved when he answered I didn’t actually ask if he was okay or anything. Just told him what I told you and that Jane came back all confused.”

“How so?”

“She thought it had only been a few minutes not hours. So she was angry when she saw the cops,” Darcy admitted. “And because you know, they were arresting us, they manhandled her and she freaked and then this burst of energy rocked the place, knocking everyone down, blowing the glass out of car windows and the cops called thinking a bomb or something hit or that Jane was a terrorist. Jane isn’t a terrorist,” Darcy added firmly, “she cries when she accidentally crushes spiders when taking them out of the house. She couldn’t hurt a fly.”

“I believe you,” Loki assured. He looked up to the other man, “Mr Boothby, wasn’t it? Do you know where Doctors Foster and Selvig set up their work?”

“Yeah, it’s near Waterloo.”

Loki nodded, “Would you and Miss Lewis kindly go on ahead and assure Doctor Selvig that all is well and that I will bring Doctor Foster as soon as she is released?”

“Hell no, I’m staying,” Darcy shot, the fire in her gaze enough to convince Loki she would not move for man nor beast. “Ian should probably go keep Erik company,” she allowed, turning to shoot Ian a meaningful look, “And make sure he doesn’t run off again.”

“I… ah, yes, I can do that,” he replied awkwardly. “Are you sure, Darcy?”

She nodded and after a few assurances, Ian relented.

After Ian left and the silence between them stretched, Loki offered, “You’re a very loyal friend.”

“To who? The guy I forgot about, the scared woman I can’t see because she’s in cell or the cute guy I just told to go home because I don’t want him thinking I’m a freak when I ask you if this is to do with aliens?” Darcy asked flatly. “It’s aliens, isn’t it? Erik told us about the Tesseract and New York.”

“He should not have. He signed an NDA.”

Darcy scoffed, pushing her glasses back up her nose with a finger. “Yeah, well. That went off the table when we heard him talking about intergalactic portals in his sleep and Chitauri.” She fixed him with a hard look, “So spill.”

For all her bravado, Loki could tell from the tense set of her shoulders that Darcy was scared. And she had every right to be, they weren’t releasing Jane until the morning (though Loki hoped that by waiting in the hallway and having the police speak with SHIELD’s HR team he would be able to get her sooner rather than later), Darcy probably hadn’t spoken to Selvig for long enough to understand the portals or the Convergence, if that was even something she was able to comprehend. Arguably aliens were the least of her worries.

“I don’t think it’s aliens,” he confided gently. “What’s happening is a natural Convergence of the Nine Realms, creating the portals you, Miss Foster and Mr Boothby discovered. They will all be gone in a few days.”

“And Jane? What’s going on with her?”

“I don’t know until I am allowed to examine her,” Loki admitted, mildly taken aback that Darcy knew or perhaps didn’t question his explanation of the Convergence. “You know of the Nine Realms?”

“Huh? Yeah uh, us – Midgard – Asgard, Joblunhein, Musspihein, Fannytime, Hell, Niffiliid, Elf-Place and Other Elf-Place. Erik was studying the Bifrost before this weird portal stuff was going on. It’s a… Rosenkranz Bridge or something?”

Loki bit his lip to keep from laughing at the horribly pronounced names. Though he made a note to tell Hogun if he ever saw him again that humans believed he hailed from Fannytime. “I believe the current theoretical concept for Bifrost is called an ‘Einstein-Rosen Bridge’.” Something he only knew because Tony had called it that while using some of Selvig’s older work as bedtime reading.

Darcy waved her hand dismissively, “Same thing. So where does the portal go?”

“To another planet most likely.”

“So it _is_ aliens.”

“Well… technically,” Loki allowed, slumping slightly in defeat. “But did Jane mention seeing anyone?”

Darcy looked away. “No…”

They slipped into silence again, Darcy slipping her phone out to text or perhaps just to fiddle with. As time drew on, the stress of the day seemed to catch up with Darcy, her eyelids growing heavy and eventually slipping shut, head falling forward. Gently taking the woman’s glasses off when they started to dangle precariously from her nose, Loki slipped one of the spectacle’s arms under the Velcro strap of her coat before pressing one corner of Darcy’s glasses into her hand so she could find them quickly upon waking.

He was granted permission to interview Jane at three a.m. though was unable to talk down the armed policemen that insisted on being present. “Just… please stay by the door and… try not to look threatening,” Loki advised the man and woman duo in their Kevlar. “We’re going to move slowly and telegraph. We’re going to have a non-aggressive discussion and find out what she knows. Alright?”

They nodded though didn’t appear less threatening as they flanked Loki into the interview room, Jane’s wide, distrustful gaze sweeping over all of them before flickering to Loki as he sat down opposite her. “Good morning, Doctor Foster,” he greeted cordially. “Doctor Selvig has informed me of some of your situation, will you allow me to help you?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who are you and how do you know Erik?”

“My name is Loki Laufeyson and Doctor Selvig and I worked for the organisation SHIELD together during his time in New York, albeit in different departments.”

“So… you know what happened there?”

Loki nodded. “I do. And as I said, I know some of what is going on now. I do not think you are a threat, Doctor, but I think you might have had contact with something that is panicking.” He gestured to her cuffed hands. “I can take those off if you like?”

“You can _not_ ,” barked one of the officers behind him.

“She took down three officers before we got them on,” added the other.

He cast a look over his shoulder, “Those handcuffs are only on because she permitted it, probably out of guilt for hurting you all in the first place.” A glance to Jane’s bowed head showed he was probably correct.

Raising her hand Jane shook her head, “It’s fine, really.” She pursed her lips, swallowing before looking desperately at Loki. “Just tell me what’s happening to me.”

“I do not know,” Loki said honestly. “But I can find out. Will you let me touch you?”

Jane shook her head, “No one’s been able to without getting blasted back.”

“That’s alright. You just have to stay calm,” Loki told her softly, smiling reassuringly. “Can you do that?” He reached a hand out across the table, palm down. “Reach out and touch my hand. I do not believe you will hurt me.” He just needed Jane to believe it too.

Slowly, Jane stretched out a shaking hand. Her finger brushed the tip of Loki’s middle finger, her hand shooting back to her chest as she stared at Loki’s hand in fright, fire sparking and burning of its own accord at the point she had touched. “D-did I do that?”

“Well it wasn’t me,” Loki said, wincing before lifting his hand up with more curiosity than concern. Behind him the two policemen levelled their handguns at Jane. After inspecting the flames a moment he covered his burning finger with his other hand and quelled the flames with a burst of chill magic. “There, all gone. No harm done,” he smiled showing the humans his hand, a small red patch of skin all that remained to say he had been hurt at all. “You can stand down,” he added to the officers.

Neither moved. Loki groaned and turned around to face them. “I’ve humoured you long enough. Either you listen to me and lower your weapons or I will bodily remove you from the room,” he told them sternly. “She is scared. _That_ is the cause of the fire and the attacks on your comrades.”

“That isn’t standard protocol,” tried the woman.

Rolling his eyes, Loki said flippantly, “Yes well, unlike you, I actually have standard protocol for spontaneous magical events.”

“You do?” the man frowned.

“Magic isn’t real,” the woman shook her head.

“Magic’s just a placeholder name for the unknown,” Jane supplied. Loki glanced back at her. “Do you know what’s happening to me?”

“The answer is the same as before. No.” Loki waved a hand in gesture to her. “But I don’t fear you. It could be a latent mutant gene triggering from your interaction with a wormhole or you may have encountered something on the other side. Doctor Foster, I need you to help me understand so I can help you.”

Jane swallowed and nodded. “I don’t really know what happened. I was with Darcy and then… my hearing went and then I saw somewhere else and then I _was_ somewhere else. I was walking along a platform with a knot design, like Celtic or Nordic or something. And at the end there was an obelisk. It… split at the middle and this red stuff came out. I don’t know what it was, but it seemed to call to me. I couldn’t get away, I was entranced or something. And then it flowed into my arm and there was pain, and screaming and I saw… Earth I think? It was being plunged into darkness.” She shrugged helplessly. “And then I was suddenly in the lot. And Darcy said I’d been gone five hours.”

Loki frowned, none of that sounded good. “Which arm?”

Jane pointed to her left.

Getting up slowly, Loki came around to her side of the table. “I’m just going to touch your arm, alright? If you stay calm, nothing will come of it.”

“But, the fire-”

“Was because you feared you would hurt me,” Loki cut her off. “It’s fine. Trust me.”

Swallowing, she nodded and Loki slowly wrapped his hand around her arm. Nothing happened. He smiled at her, receiving a small one from Jane in reply. Sliding her coat sleeve up with his other hand, Loki noticed the dark veins spreading from a single point in Jane’s arm that glowed red hot. “Does it hurt at all?” he asked, gently pressing at her forearm, shifting her wrist as though checking for a broken bone.

“A bit, yeah. And I get really tired whenever I – it? – does something.”

He nodded along. Holding her wrist with one hand and raising his other hand above it, he looked to Jane. “I’m going to perform a diagnostic spell on you. It shouldn’t hurt but you will see some green energy. Is that alright?” Seeing Jane’s eyes fill with worry, he moved his hand away and conjured the image of a rabbit in his palm, leaving it as wisps of green energy rather than leaning into the urge to flesh the illusion out and make it realistic. “Completely safe I assure you. And anyway,” he smirked, “If you don’t like it, I’ll just get blasted back and apologise.”

She didn’t look certain but relented. The framework of creating a small soulforge was delicate work and for a moment, Loki’s smile faltered as he concentrated the arcs of green energy flowing slowly and carefully, suspending Jane’s arm as the baffled humans looked on.

“So,” mumbled Jane, clearing her throat before asking more strongly, “Do you get blasted around a lot?”

Smirk back full strength, Loki chuckled lightly, “I’m not unused to it.”

“How’s this… ‘spell’ work?”

“It transfers energy from my body to yours and then, not unlike a printer scanner presents an image above of the inside of your arm. A 3D X-ray of sorts,” Loki said as the image started to take form. “See?”

“That… shouldn’t be possible.”

“Hence calling it magic,” Loki said shrugging a shoulder. “How are you feeling?” he asked as he shifted his attention from Jane to the magical image, stretching it with a gesture and skimming his gaze over the runes that flagged up Jane’s biometric information. “Your blood sugars are low, you should probably eat something.”

Jane startled, blushing, “Y-your magic can tell that?”

He hummed an affirmative twisting the image with a flick of his wrist. “It also tells me that you are bonded with something.” Not that he needed the soulforge to tell him that, Loki could still sense whatever had affected him in the hotel room and the source was undoubtedly radiating from Jane.

What he still didn’t know, was just _what_ was inside of her.

“Can you get it out?”

Loki didn’t know, but there would be no trying in the current situation. “Not here,” he said with more confidence than he felt. Dropping the soulforge, he looked behind him to the officers, “I’m taking Doctor Foster into SHIELD custody. I assume there’s no problem with that?”

He clicked his fingers, Jane’s handcuffs falling to the table with a dull clatter. Both policemen shook their heads, looking fearful.

Smiling Loki gestured for Jane to stand. “Come along, Doctor Foster, Miss Lewis is waiting for us in the hallway.”

“Just Jane is fine,” Jane mumbled, rubbing her wrists and gingerly following Loki from the room. “What are you?”

“A SHIELD operative,” Loki insisted, walking along calmly.

“JANE!” Darcy threw herself at the other woman, Jane returning the embrace tightly.

“Darcy!”

Giving the women a moment before gently nudging them out of the station, Loki turned up the collar of his overcoat against the chill winter winds, a learned reaction more than an actual response to the temperature.

“So, where’s your car, dude?” asked Darcy looking up and down the street.

“I don’t have one.”

“Uh…” she quirked her eyebrow, her expression one of utter confusion.

Unperturbed, Loki started walking down the road, the two women following for lack of any other options at four in the morning.

“You know, you didn’t answer my question,” Jane reminded after a moment.

“I told you, I am a SHIELD agent.”

“But how do you have powers that are unexplained or speak so casually about me probably getting an infection from another planet.”

Loki twisted neatly on his heel, walking backwards to keep his course. “Firstly, I said something had bonded with you, not that it was an infection. Secondly, even Doctor Selvig and Miss Lewis accept the notion that these portals you were finding link to other planets within the Nine Realms. It is not so odd a concept, and thirdly, I am classified as an ‘enhanced individual’, in layman’s terms, I have powers. Was born with them. I am neither at liberty nor required to further answer your questions.” He turned back to face forward and lead them towards the Thames, which was mostly deserted other than for the occasional drunk or tramp.

“Rude,” Jane grumbled, still following anyway. She and Darcy chatted softly behind him while Loki thought through his options.

He needed to remove whatever was inside Jane, it was feeding off of her life force as far as the soulforge had been able to determine and she obviously had no control over the entity if the nightmare at the police station was anything to go by. They could go to Loki’s hotel room, it would be quiet but not ideal, likely the same conditions should they go to Jane’s place of work.

Ultimately Loki was forced to acknowledge he needed to do some research and analyse what this could be before he tried to remove it, and while he wanted to avoid putting Jane in a cage, she really couldn’t be left unsupervised.

After several minutes, Loki realised the women’s voices were fainter. Turning he found them several feet away looking at some device that was beeping obnoxiously.

“What is that?” he asked, coming back to Jane and Darcy as Jane raised her eyes to look around them.

“It says there’s a quantum anomaly around here,” replied Jane.

Loki sighed muttering, “I swear, if it isn’t gamma, something quantum is usually happening.” Louder he tried, “So what does that mean for those without a doctorate?”

The top of a building on the other side of the river crumbled as though something had collided with it, startling the three. As they watched, more buildings cracked and fell apart until whatever was causing it stopped. From the lights of the streetlamps they could see movement, the sky rippling as the cloaking on a huge spaceship came undone. The shape was not dissimilar to a capital T though as the soldiers inside dismounted, Loki was filled with dread. He knew the horned white masks with dark eye holes, remembered them very clearly from a story book he had read as a child. The only place Loki had believed those warriors remained.

“Star Wars?” said Darcy.

“Worse,” croaked Loki, swallowing. “Dark Elves.”

The Svartalfar were supposed to have been massacred, but it was hard to deny their existence as they began to turn weapons on the nightwalkers of London city. Shrieking, Darcy and Jane stumbled back only to cry out and turn as buildings on their side of the river began to collapse.

“More ships, they’re cloaked,” Loki explained. He pointed to the device Jane was clutching. “Can that device detect the ships?”

With a knuckle-white grip, Jane looked down at the screen, then at the spaceships around them. “Yeah. H-how’d they get here?”

“Not now.” Loki followed the path of destruction before raising his hand to take aim, grimacing slightly as he fired a large bolt of green energy, his blast rippling across the ship’s shielding. “You two need to run. Just tell me how many ships I need to distract.”

Darcy whirled on him. “Are you insane!?”

“Not in the least. Go!” He aimed higher this time, his bolt catching something of import as the second ship lost its cloaking. “Ship numbers, quickly!”

“Five,” responded Jane. “They’re coming closer.” Screams erupted around them as energy blasts descended from the air from the other cloaked ships, many of the bolts hitting the water, throwing the liquid everywhere. Across the river, some Svartalfar warriors had turned to the three, Loki seeing them just in time to throw up an energy shield to protect himself, Darcy and Jane from their blasters.

“Okay, you know what, I don’t care!” Darcy cried, grabbing Jane by the wrist and running off down the street.

Loki returned fire to the ships as best he could, very aware that the second ship was already releasing more Svartalfar onto the Earth. He needed to keep their attention and let as many humans as possible escape. One of the ships still in the air removed its cloaking. Taking his chance, Loki ran forward, pushing chill magic to his feet, the cold making quick work of his shoes, disintegrating them as Loki jumped into the river, his feet freezing the water on contact and allowing him to run on the surface. Magic sparked at his hands, releasing in two long tendrils of energy which Loki wrapped around the spaceship before he ripped it out of the sky and into the water with a guttural growl.

Praying the bastards couldn’t breathe under water and that he’d done enough damage to prevent that ship flying off, Loki turned his attention to the Svartalfar on the banks that were shooting at him, dodging and throwing up a shield, scrambling for the knives in his pocket dimensions.

Vanishing in a flash of green, Loki reappeared behind a group of Svartalfar, stabbing two fatally before any of the others caught sight of him. There wasn’t time to question, humans lay dead in his peripherals and the Svartalfar wouldn’t be on Earth without a purpose when it was Asgard that had wronged them last. His blades flashed in the streetlight, finding their marks between Loki’s careful footwork, placing a Svartalf meat-shield between him and the other Dark Elves at any point he was unable to immediately stab his next opponent. He kept his movements tight and flowing, locating his targets quickly. Ducking, he struck the next one in the thigh, kneeing it in the head before his fingers hooked into its face mask and Loki stabbed its heart. Throwing the carcass aside, Loki almost missed the grenade flying towards him.

Diving away into an alley, the grenade ruptured behind Loki, a strong vortex sucking at the material around it. Loki dug the knives in each of his hands deep into the concrete as his legs rose into the air. Blessedly the void closed as suddenly as it had opened. Picking himself up, Loki loosed a knife into the throat of the last Svartalfar standing before it could reach a hand to its belt once more.

Catching movement on his peripherals, Loki turned towards the source. An unmasked Svartalfar with piercing blue eyes and a dark cloak the only thing marking it different to the others Loki had slain.

“Svartalfheim is a long way from here,” Loki called, taking the moment to catch his breath. His muscles hurt and his arms throbbed, but he wasn’t about to give up. In the distance, humans could still be heard screaming as they tried to find safety.

“You aren’t the one I seek,” the Svartalfar noted angrily, voice decidedly masculine. “Where is the Aether?!”

“Are you daft?!” Loki shot, trying not to let the shock show on his face. “The Aether hasn’t been seen for millennia! And it certainly isn’t here!” Except that that would neatly explain Jane’s sudden ability to bend reality and now that Loki was thinking about it, the Aether had been described as ‘embracing Malekith as a _host’_. “Who are you anyway?”

“I am Malekith,” the Svartalf replied, raising his weapon. “And if you have nothing to offer me, then you can die like all the other scum blighting Yggdrasil.”

Throwing himself to the side, Loki dodged the gunfire, barrel rolling into the Thames to escape Malekith’s immediate sight. “So much for being executed by Bor,” Loki sighed. He looked around, fires were breaking out in some of the buildings and Loki had no idea if Darcy and Jane had gotten away, or if the other humans in the area had been able to evacuate.

The sound of an energy blast above him reached Loki’s ears just before his right shoulder exploded in pain, Loki having turned and raised his hand instinctively at the noise. Backpedalling, hand on his bloody shoulder, Loki looked up to find Malekith adjusting his aim, eyebrows slightly raised as he noticed the ice at Loki’s blue feet upon the water.

“What are you? Fae?” he wondered.

“Jotun,” growled Loki. “I am Loki of Jotunheim!”

“Then prepare to die, Loki of Jotunheim,” Malekith said dispassionately, gun barrel levelled at him. A scream pierced the night, both Loki and Malekith turning to see Jane and Darcy running, a tall dark skinned Svartalfar following behind. Reaching out a hand, Malekith grinned. “Ah, Algrim, well done. You can kill the other one.”

Loki’s eyes widened, “Darcy!”

At his cry the woman faltered. Loki had teleported before he’d properly thought about it, hand slipping around Darcy’s middle and throwing her out of the way of the Svartalfar’s blade. Blood flooded Loki’s lung and up his oesophagus as the blade went through his chest, Loki coughing harshly, spluttering blood as he tried to draw breath.

He went down like a sack of bricks, knees crashing hard onto the ground below, vision swimming and fading into black.

* * *

Darcy threw her hands up automatically, rolling along the cobbled floor. Her momentum carried her into a café’s outdoor seating area, the table she smacked into knocking the wind out of her.

Struggling to her hands and knees, she saw Jane floating in the air before Malekith, red flowing out of her body. It wasn't blood, nor was it solid, looking crystal-esque when it caught the light of the streetlamps. Darcy looked to Loki, intending to shout for help, only for the words to die on her lips when she saw Loki in a heap on the floor in a pool of blood. Above Loki, Algrim flicked the blood from his sword before stepping over the Jotun to approach and kneel before Malekith, whom the red from Jane was flowing into.

“Shit!” muttered Darcy, staying down, watching as Jane suddenly dropped to the floor one Malekith had absorbed all of the red. Malekith and Algrim exchanged words before turning away and leaving them alone. Darcy waited a minute to check the aliens wouldn't change their minds before she wobbled to her feet and ran towards Loki and Jane. Around them, she could see a few of the the alien ships from before slowly rise into the air then disappear. They must have gotten what they wanted.

She swallowed thickly and turned back to her friend and the man who had saved her. Seeing Jane start to twitch and groan as she came to, Darcy made her way over to Loki to check if he was even alive. “Come on dude, don’t be dead,” she said, pursing her lips and falling to her knees beside him. She pushed Loki onto his back to see his entire front a mess of red. “Oh shit. J-Jane! Help!” She turned to look at Jane only to feel herself kiltering to the side. "Huh?"

Jane rolled over and turned her head, getting up onto her elbows. “Darcy? Darcy!”

“Jane!” Clutching to Loki, the last thing Darcy saw was Jane’s terrified expression before the darkness of London and the feeling of nothing under her knees was replaced by the crunch of snow and white as far as the eye could see.

The snow below them was slowly turning red as blood continued to seep from Loki's limp form. One hand still curled into the lapel of Loki's suit jacket, Darcy looked around, trying to spot someone. "H-Hello?! Anyone? Hello?!" she shouted, the chill air around them catching in the back of her throat, making Darcy cough. Shuddering from the coughs and the rapidly increasing cold, Darcy wrapped her arms around herself, looking up as a cloud shifted, making the snowscape a little brighter. "Oh fuck." The increased light had come from a moon. Unfortunately, there was more than one moon in the sky, which could only mean one thing.

They weren't on Earth any more.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Leaving Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29162724) by [aistifcisi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aistifcisi/pseuds/aistifcisi)




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